Bastian Lehmann, the founder/CEO of the delivery app company Postmates told a customer to "f*uck off" when he accidentially responded to a complaint email instead of forwarding it on to his team. "Someone also please tell her to fuck off," he wrote. The customer took to Twitter to share her experience which led Lehmann to make a public apology on his blog. "My e-mail, which outlined how to resolve the customer issue, contained a bad joke which was very poor in taste," he wrote. "Subsequently, the bad joke was sent to the customer."

An Ohio book lover is trying to stop her local Barnes & Noble from shutting down and has started a grass roots email marketing campaign to do so. The woman sent an email about 350 of her neighbors asking them to email the shopping center owner Glimcher Realty Trust. The book seller has said that the landlord had raised the rent too much which led to the closure.

Fifty-four percent of marketers say that the new Gmail Tabs feature hasn't changed the amount of time they spend looking at promotional messages, according to a new report from email marketing services firm StrongView. The report did reveal that 40 percent of consumers say they spend less time viewing promotional messages. The feature automatically filters promotional emails into a subcategory in the inbox. Seven percent of survey respondents said that they spend even more time viewing promotional messages in tabs.

Ark is a new mobile app that lets you do a search on a person that you are emailing from the email client. The tool will search for the person and bring up feedback such as a LinkedIn or a Facebook profile within the mobile email client. The app helps people do research on business contacts without having to leave the email client.

Mobile startup Conduit is merging with Perion Network, owner of Incredimail, in an all-stock transaction. Conduit's Client Connect business and Perion will be merged into one new business unit. The newly combined Perion company will represent more than 260,000 publisher and content partners.

Want to sound like you spy for the government? The owner of the domain NSA.org is selling email addresses for $100 a piece. You can buy a NSA.org email address or a subdomain email address such as @internationalspy.nsa.org. The forty year old domain owner is an IT consultant that bought the domain name back in 1995.

Seventy-one percent of merchants report that email is their most effective channel, according to a new report from Daily Deal Media. According to DDM's 2013 Online Marketing Trends Merchant Survey which includes input from more than 13,000 merchants based in the U.S., 67 percent reported having an annual marketing budget of less than $5,000. Six percent of merchants said that daily deals are an effective marketing tool, while 19 percent said that social reviews hurt their business.

Half of 18-24 year olds think that Gmail's new tabs makes it easier to manage their email, according to new research from marketing services company Strongview. Across all age groups, only 33% of respondents like the new format. The report also found that the people most likely to check the promotion tab are these young folks, with 12.5% of them checking it more than three times a day. Across all age groups 46.4% of Gmail users check the promotion tab less than once a week and 4.4% never check it.

Marriott International has resigned a multiyear agreement with Epsilon, an Alliance Data company. Under the terms of the agreement, Epsilon will continue to provide email marketing support for Marriott International, Marriott Rewards, and The Ritz-Carlton. Epsilon will continue to power Marriott Rewards' email program which includes newsletters, monthly statements, account information and promotions. The company will also provide trigger-based transactional messages including purchase confirmation, pre-arrival messages and post-stay receipts. The two firms have been working together since 2008.

Gordon Mangione, a former Microsoft executive, has introduced a new email management iPhone app called Tipbit. The app aims brings together email with calendars, shared documents and contacts, as well as social networking accounts, to function as a kind of communications command center. "No one can find anything any longer and no one can respond efficiently," Mangione told Mashable. The company was founded to solve this issue.