Email marketing is one of the most effective online marketing channels and it has a great return on investment. By working with an email service provider, marketers have access to personalization and targeting tools that make for better and more effective campaigns. Companies that capture email data and use this data to make informed decisions about future campaigns tend to have more successful returns.

Email software services company ContactMonkey has expanded its business and added a new tool for sales people to track who is opening their emails. The new tool gives sales reps email insights into who is opening their emails, how many times they have opened it, when and where they opened it and on which devices.

For craft supply e-commerce company Xyron, email proved to be an effective driver of engagement with the company's Pinterest page. Working with email marketing services firm PinLeague during the holidays, Xyron created a campaign that grew the company's Pinterest followers by 1,317 percent and repins by 1,366 percent.

Macworld has reviewed MailForge 3.2.2, the latest email client from Macsimize Software, and claims that the software is a throwback to the early days of email. Comparing the software to Eudora, reporter Nathan Alderman concludes that, "If you can't live without Eudora, MailForge will likely have you turning cartwheels." But he doesn't recommend the software for anyone else.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell used an email marketing message to show his support for Republican Senator Rand Paul's filibuster which took place last week. McConnell, who is up for reelection next year, sent an email to supporters in which he praised Rand's behavior during John Brennan's nomination for CIA director. "Thirteen hours on the Senate floor with no breaks. Thirteen hours of pushing back against an out of control Obama Administration who often refuses to work with or even acknowledge Congress," reads the email.

Yahoo and the British Broadband Provider BT are investigating a surge in spam emails that have been showing up in the inboxes of BT Yahoo users. The Telegraph reports that more than six million BT broadband customers have reported that their Yahoo email accounts have been compromised. These customers have been locked out of their accounts and their contacts have received spam messages from these accounts.

Return Path's director of response consulting business Guy Hanson has been selected to serve as the chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB) Email Council in the UK. In his role, Hanson is tasked with educating marketers about the email channel.

Marketers are required to add an unsubscribe button to their emails to give the consumer the option to opt out but that doesn't have to mean the end of the relationship. Marketers should take advantage of the opt out and ask consumers why they are quitting in an attempt to learn more about the customer. Many consumers want to opt out because they receive too many emails from a company and simply giving customers the chance to control the frequency of the emails will save the relationship.

While you may certainly hear from industry executives who claim that personalized, targeted, and triggered messaging is the status quo for email these days, not everyone agrees that batch-and-blast emails are a thing of the past. In fact, Multichannel Merchant spoke to two executives at eTail West last month, who claimed there is a place for emails that go to everyone on your list. For example, a Valentine's Day promotion might go out to anyone on your customer list and it doesn't matter what time of day they prefer to open your emails.

More than half of email marketers are integrating email with social media, according to metrics from Marketing Sherpa. The study also found that more than 75 percent of marketers consider email and social media to be the most effective customer engagement tools. Marketers have work to do when it comes to mobile. Despite the fact that every consumer seems to be checking email on their phones these days, only 21 percent of the marketers surveyed expressed an interest in integrating email with mobile marketing.