The Australian Rugby Union is revamping its ten year old CRM system and is integrating this new system with its email marketing program which is powered by email marketing services company StrongMail. The organization uses CRM to profile customers, as well as to profile players and connect them with player management. Fans receive monthly email newsletters, which sell merchandise and include sponsor offers. The organization also promotes classes to players and coaches within the league.

Randy Parker, the founder of Contant Contact, a popular email marketing services company in the SMB market, has launched a new mobile web platform called PagePart. The new company offers small businesses a low-cost way to create mobile-optimized web experiences for their brand. The tool is designed to make it easy for a small business to have a current looking web site that is optimized for mobile without much effort on the part of users. The tool pulls content from the company's social media pages to simplify the process for users.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will continue work on a proposal on Thursday morning that would revise the rules for the government's access to citizen's email communications. Under the current Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was written in 1986, police are only required to get a subpoena to access a consumer's private email communications that have been opened or that are more than 180 days old. The new rules would require law enforcement to obtain a search warrant to access a citizen's emails.

Testing subject lines can help email marketers increase conversion rates. Email consultant Jeanne Jennings explained how she helped her client increase conversion rates by 19 percent by doing so. In a piece for ClickZ, she explained the process, " we scheduled the test over multiple sends, to try to guarantee we'd get statistically significant results (it's a small group; there are only about 40,000 subscribers total). Once again we pitted the control subject line ('Subscriber Newsletter') against subject lines that included a key theme in the first 25 characters, your subject line 'prime real estate.'"

In recent weeks, the IRS has come under scrutiny after the ACLU criticized the government agency's policy on reading emails without a warrant. Since then the agency has come under fire from various politicians and civil rights groups. In a statement sent to CSO, the IRS claimed that it does not use emails to target taxpayers. The agency stated, "Our job is to administer the nation's tax laws, and we do so in a way that follows the law and treats taxpayers with respect. Contrary to some suggestions, the IRS does not use emails to target taxpayers. Any suggestion to …

Colorado senator Mark Udall has criticized the IRS after reports surfaced that the organization allegedly reads citizens emails with a warrant. "I have serious concerns about the IRS's recent comments that it can search and seize citizens' emails, Facebook posts, tweets and other digital communications without a warrant. This is an affront not only to our system of checks and balances, but also to our fundamental right to privacy," Udall said in a statement.

Google has created a new feature called the "Inactive Account Manager," which lets Google users decide what to do with their data when they die. Consumers can decide to have their Gmail, Google+ and other Google accounts deleted or they can opt to share their account data with up to ten "trusted contacts." In the instance that their account hasn't been signed into in three or more months, Google will automatically send out password information to these trusted contacts.

Econsultancy has rounded up some statistics which highlight the growth in mobile email adoption among consumers. For example, according to Knotice, 41 percent of all emails were opened on mobile devices. Nielsen found that 68 percent of consumers in the UK used their mobiles to check email in the previous 30 days. Meanwhile, according to Econsultancy's own Email Marketing Industry Census, sponsored by Adestra, only 25 percent of marketers are optimizing emails for mobile.

Digital marketing services company Responsys has created an infographic that explores how marketing has evolved since the days of Mad Men. According to the graphic, the first electronic message was sent in 1971, an early predecessor to email. Simon Robinson, senior director of marketing and alliances for EMEA at Responsys, told The Drum that as technologies have evolved so has marketing, pointing out that, "new school marketers are succeeding by using digital technologies to develop lasting, one-on-one relationships with their customers."

Sendicate, a startup that helps businesses create email newsletters, is moving out of beta testing today and has launched its first official Version 1.0. In addition, as TechCrunch reports, "the company is launching an API, so that other products can integrate with the Sendicate service." The service is aimed at publishers, marketers and e-commerce sites that want to create nice email newsletters but don't have the budgets for expensive email tools.