Mailbird, a new email client for Windows users is launching in beta this week. The app is integrated with Google Calendar and Dropbox. The company will continue to roll out new features in the coming months, including "Wingman," a tool that shows users how productive they're being within their email inbox including stats like how long they spend composing messages, who they email the most and how long it takes on average to get a response. TechCrunch reporter Sarah Perez points out that the new application resembles Sparrow, an email app that was recently acquired by Google, but admits there …

Destination XL Group has teamed up with CQuotient to create email marketing campaigns. The retailer is working with the email services company to create personalized email offers that are good both online and offline. The brand plans to take advantage of CQuotient's technology which mines retail data to create predictive algorithms and thus personalized offers.

It's tax time again and spam messages claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service are spreading like wildfire. The government agency does not communicate with citizens via email, so if you've got an email that claims to be from the IRS, it is spam. The government agency is asking consumers to forward the email to phishing@irs.gov. Then delete the original email from your computer. Be careful not to click any links and not to open any attachments in the malicious message.

Total email volume per sender is up almost 5 percent this year, according to Experian's Q4 2012 Quarterly Benchmark Study. But marketers should be wary of thinking that more is better, argues Strongmail's Justin Williams in a piece on ClickZ. He breaks down the numbers and illustrates how sending more volume can increase revenue on a mailing, but argues that over time it can increase unsubscribes. Instead, he says that marketers should focus more on A/B testing which can increase ROI without leading to list churn.

Armadillo Willy's, a barbecue chain in Northern California, partnered with FiveStars, a national network of interconnected loyalty programs that let consumers earn store-specific rewards with a single loyalty card at all participating small businesses. The restaurant uses the platform to collect email addresses and mobile phone numbers into one central point-of-sale database. The platform uses customer data to trigger offers and track rewards. Since they launched the program in February 2012, the restaurant has 12,500 loyalty members and has seen a 21 percent boost in foot traffic among members.

Google loves a good April Fool's Day joke. This year Gmail is at the center of it. Poking fun of itself, the company "released" a "new" product called, Gmail Blue. "It's Gmail, only bluer." The joke includes a launch video in which the company explains that it took six years to develop the technology to dye Gmail blue, after experimenting with various different colors.

Email marketing messages sent out on Mondays generate the highest revenue per mail, according to a recent study from Experian CheetahMail. The report also explained that emails sent on Friday had the highest click rates. According to the report, the best time and day to mail can vary by industry. However, emails sent on Saturdays and Sundays had the highest open and click rates, and the highest transaction rates, across the industry. Yet, email marketers sent their lowest volume of emails over the weekend.