Austrailan weight loss company Bride Body has grown its database by collecting emails through an opt-in box on it website, as well as collecting addresses at wedding expos. According to the company's founder Grace Bowe, more than 60 per cent of its customers were on the company email list prior to making a purchase.

Mobile and social are changing the email marketing landscape, argued Richard Fleck, VP of strategic services at Responsys and Simms Jenkins, CEO of BrightWave Marketing at a panel at SESNY this week. "Email is the hub of all digital messaging," said Jenkins, as he revealed the most common goals for email marketing are very similar to the leading objectives for mobile marketing. But email has a higher ROI, he pointed out. Fleck's tips on how marketers can keep email relevant include: integrating with mobile and social, using integrated lifecycle display, and adopting predictive churn mitigation programs.

For Sundeep Kapur, director of strategic e-commerce marketing at electronic company NCR Corporation, personalization in email is more than just knowing what your customer's name is and then formatting an email ,"Dear So and So." In an interview with Direct Marketing News, Kapur said, "It's nice if I address you by your name, but it's even better if I can remember what you did the last time or if I know what you like." He recommends that email marketers use data to get to know customers better and create messaging based on their behavior.

Integrated digital marketing is helping Shutterfly keep its print photography business alive and well in a time when Kodak and Fujifilm have folded. With $641 million in sales for 2012, an increase of 35% over 2011, the company depends on smart digital promotions. Triggered emails and database integration are at the center of this game plan. The company's four main brands --Shutterfly, Tiny Prints, Wedding Paper Divas and Treat -- have their own databases, but they can share from each other hoping to move customers from one brand to another. "For instance, a Wedding Paper Divas customer who bought save-the-date …

Forty-six percent of Mother's Day themed emails will be sent during the week before the holiday, according to data from Experian Marketing Services. It's not a big surprise, since Experian has found that 80 percent of transactions are triggered by emails sent in the 14 days before the holiday. Consumers like a good deal in these emails. According to Experian's data, there is a 32 percent transaction rate increase in emails that include an offer-based subject line. In addition, there is a 15 percent revenue increase for those emails.

Stripe, a San Francisco-based payments start-up, has a very open email policy. The company lets any employee access any email sent within the company by making it internally public and searchable. The idea behind this transparent policy is that if every email is accessible, then everyone at the company will be aware of what is going on with the business, cutting down the number of meetings and increasing workflow.

The FBI is pushing for the right to access a consumer's email, cloud services, or chat programs. Under the current Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, the FBI can force phone companies to tap a consumer's phone, but these digital communications are not currently accessible to FBI investigators. General counsel Andrew Weissmann revealed said in a talk to the American Bar Association last week getting the power to monitor these kinds of digital communications in real time is a "top priority this year," reports Gizmodo.

Homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano thinks that email is a waste of time. "In many respects, in a job like mine, it's inefficient," she said at a breakfast Tuesday hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. Napolitano is also not keen on texting or Twitter. She prefers to speak on the phone.

A little bit less than a third of doctors emailed with their patients in 2012, which was up from 27 percent from five years earlier, according to a report by Manhattan Research, a market research firm that analyzes the health care industry. Doctors who do email patients are finding that it is a good way to communicate with patients without playing phone tag. They also hope it will prevent inaccurate online searches and the wrong self-diagnosis. Those who don't use email are concerned about privacy, security, liability, and the potential to miscommunicate important medical information.

According to a study done by The Relevancy Group, only 23 percent of email marketers are using a tool to measure their performance and against the competition. That number is growing as 24 percent of marketers said they plan on analyzing their competitors' email marketing messages this year. David Daniels, founder of the email research firm The Relevancy Group, argues that having competitive insight helps marketers optimize their performance. According to the report, 56 percent of marketers whose email programs contribute 25 percent or more of their overall corporate revenue use an email marketing competitive analysis tool.