Econsultancy and Responsys surveyed in-house marketers and found that 56% are spending less than 30% of their budgets on digital channels, while 32% are devoting more than half of their budgets to digital, working out to an overall average of 35% of marketing budgets spent on digital initiatives. The average constitutes a 1% drop from 2011. 

A new report from Scribe Software finds that SMBs are using their CRM applications for more than management of prospect and customer contact information. 65% are using CRMs for lead nurturing while 59% use their CRM application for email marketing. 

A federal appeals court has ruled the government can continue to keep secret its efforts to pursue the private information of Internet users without a warrant as part of its probe into the WikiLeaks. The ruling finds that information revealing conversations existed electronically between individuals is metadata, and is not the same as content (ie, the actual messages exchanged) and is not subject to the same legal protection. 

Gartner Analyst Svetlana Sicular recently blogged that big data is falling into the "trough of disillusionment," the stage in the Gartner Hype Cycle that follows the "peak of inflated expectations." Perhaps the bigger threat to big data is its opposition to another prevailing email trend - inbox zero. "Imagine logging into your email every morning and discovering: You currently have (∞) Unread Messages." Read the entire article at Information Management.

New research from the Direct Marketing Association finds that 89% of senior marketers believe email is "important" or "very important," with 56% "confident that expenditure on email marketing will increase this year." The research also found that over half of the brands reported an increase in open, click and conversion rates in 2012, a 5% lift over 2011.

A source close to Microsoft has reported that the company will soon retire the Hotmail service and that its replacement, Outlook.com, will be free of ads. Hotmail is a popular low-cost platform for demand-side platforms (DSPs) to use for retargeting ads. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the Hotmail service will disappear, but denied that Outlook.com will be ad free.

A report by B-to-B Magazine found that 49% of marketers expect to increase their overall marketing budgets this year, with 67% planning to spend more on digital marketing. Among those increasing their digital marketing spend, 70% plan to spend more on website development, followed by email at 62%, social media and video each at 56%, and search at 53%.

Facebook has provoked the ire of some marketers by altering its algorithm so that a much smaller percentage of a brand's fans are now seeing the brand's content. Facebook instead encourages brands to use Sponsored Posts to reach a higher percentage of its fan base, a practice which costs less on average than the expense of mailing to an opted-in email list.

SMS marketing provider SlickText.com has announced a new feature that allows marketers to verify the age of recipients when opting into a SMS list. The feature was born from an agency partner's interest in targeting messages to SMS subscribers who are 21 years and older. 

The FTC has released a sweeping report on mobile privacy, based on the organization's work over the past several years, stakeholder input and feedback obtained through FTC workshops. Because at least some of these recommendations are likely to be enacted as enforceable privacy rules in the near future, the guidelines are a recommended read for any organization involved in the "mobile ecosystem," including those that provide platforms for mobile marketing.