Retail catalog company Hammacher Schlemmer has selected email service provider StrongView. The retailer plans to use the software to run email marketing campaigns across the customer lifecycle. "From automated, multi-step lifecycle programs to superior testing, optimization and ease of use, StrongView is enabling us to take a giant leap forward with our email marketing programs, including the scalability and services to keep growing and innovating," Brian Schmidt, e-commerce marketing analyst at Hammacher Schlemmer, explained to Retail Customer Experience. "With StrongView, we can now send highly targeted, data-driven campaigns that require less effort to send, track and optimize than ever before."

A lot of companies talk about dropping email as a communications tool. Automattic has proven that cutting out email in the workplace hasn't hurt business. The maker of WordPress cut out the communications channel four years ago when they began realizing that they were spending more time using email than they were using their own blog software. They dropped email and began communicating within WordPress. The company has grown a lot since then and is now valued at $1 billion.

The minds behind email encryption tools Lavabit and Silent Circle, both of whom closed down due to government pressure, have launched a new initiative aiming to deliver encrypted email called Dark Mail. The company has turned to Kickstarter to help get the project going. "The Summer of Snowden may have taken the Lavabit email service offline," reads the project's Kickstarter page. "But the lifeblood of the service is still alive and relevant to Dark Mail."

Want to know the secret to Twitter's growing success? It's email. Josh Aberant, the postmaster at Twitter, called the channel the 'lifeblood' of the social network. Twitter sends out about 22 different email notifications to users regularly. This includes updating users on when they receive a direct message, reply, retweet, or when someone favorites a Tweet. The idea is to help engage users and draw them back into the network.

Sixty-one percent of marketing emails opens were opened on a smartphone or a tablet in Q3 2013, according to a new report from email services firm Movable Ink. According to "U.S. Consumer Device Preference Report: Q3 2013," 78.7 percent of all smartphone email opens came from iPhones while 20.7 percent of marketing emails were opened on Android phones. In total, the iPhone accounted for 35.83 percent of total email opens across all devices.

London based startup Fantoo, has raised more than $720,000 on a crowdfunding platform called Crowdcube to fund a corporate email solution our-based helps companies better manage employee inboxes. The cloud-based platform anticipates the meaning of an email and automatically categorizes it into a visual inbox along with an estimated reading time.

New Zealand's parliament has passed a new law that will allow telecommunication companies to share customer's emails, phone calls and texts with the government's intelligence agencies. Under the new telecommunications interceptions and security capability bill, which narrowly passed, companies are now required to consult with the Government Communications Security Bureau whenever they plan to develop new infrastructure and networks, and let them install interception equipment on their networks.

In the same tone as its Scroogled campaign, Microsoft has launched a new campaign against Google's Gmail. This effort comes in the form of a web page called, Keep Your Email Private. The page gives visitors reasons to drop Gmail for Outlook.com by pitting the two providers against each other and stressing the fact that Google scans email messages in order to inform ads, while Microsoft does not.

Fifty-one percent of US citizens find it acceptable that the government is reading their emails, according to a recent poll conducted by TechCrunch. According to the research, 54.2 percent of Americans think it is more important to fight terrorism than it is to protect personal privacy. The study also revealed that 43 percent of Americans think that the NSA has collected and viewed their emails and/or phone calls.

The Direct Marketing Association sent an email campaign last week that was flagged by more than 100 spam traps, according to reports. According to Stephanie Miller, vice president, member communications and engagement for the DMA, the promotional email for the DMA Career Center was sent to the DMA's entire database including the suppression list. The organization apologized for the mistake.