Strongmail announced today that it is using Amazon Redshift data warehouse to store clients' marketing data. Using the new Amazon platform, which is high-speed and at a petabyte-scale, marketers will have access to all of their consumer data for analytics and insights. 

Smartphone penetration in the world’s top 19 digital markets is expected to double from 35.5% last year to an average of 71.7% in 2015, according to a new study by ZenithOptimedia. Tablet adoption will also grow aggressively but still lag smartphone penetration significantly, reaching 13% by 2015. Tablet penetration in the same top markets is currently 4.7%. Tablet penetration in the US is expected to be well ahead of the top 19 markets' average, at 45%. 

Spammers are personalizing messages with personalized information obtained through social networks for a new campaign. They employ a number of tactics to collect the information, including setting up fake accounts and sending friend requests, cloning accounts and contacting the friends of the original account, and also by harvesting personal data that many users put in their profiles unaware that it is publicly visible. 

SMS is a natural fit for app developers, and many are using it to prompt increase app usage and referral revenues. One case study featured in a white paper published by tyntec and Mobile Groove finds that an engagement campaign saw a 10% conversion rate and a SMS campaign to refer a friend saw a response rate of 50% and an activation rate of 10%.

A new study by Nectar Online Media finds that 94% of executives surveyed believe social media is important to the organization and 92% believe it enhances their brands, only 46% believe it drives revenue for the company. 

Microsoft's million dollar "Scroogled" campaign aimed at converting Gmail users to Outlook.com features as a call to action a petition the company has backed against Google's privacy practices with Gmail. After running the campaign for a week, the petition has 5,600 signatures, approximately 0.002% of Gmail's user base. 

During the week leading up to Valentine's Day, emails promoting flowers, jewlerly and other "Cupitidous fare" comprised 8% of total messages, a decrease from 2012 according to new research from Bronto. Jim Davidson, Bronto's manager of marketing research, attributes the dip to holiday competition: "I think it's been because of more competition from other events like Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, and Chinese New Year. It's year of the snake and we've seen a good amount of snake-themed emails. There's something about snakes that seems to excite pop culture."

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer discussed her plans to revive the company at the Goldman Sachs conference this week. Keys to her strategy, she said, will be to focus on fewer but more key mobile apps, an email solution that outdoes the competition's, and increasing the Facebook-like perks Yahoo has to offer. 

A new service called Mailstrom aids in the quest for inbox zero, by sorting and bundling messages by topic, sender and other aspects to make deleting them in batches simple. Working through over a thousand messages takes less than an hour. The service is currently free and works with nearly any email account.

Google Play, the search company's app and content store, shares the name, email address and city location of people purchasing apps with the developers who created them, a practice not made clear in Google's privacy policy. Google claims this is not a new practice, nor is it a bug within Google apps. The issue was brought to light by a developer himself, who pointed out that he could use the contact information to "track down and harass users who left negative reviews or refunded the app purchase."