Econsultancy and Adestra announce the launch of the 7th Annual Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census, aimed at measuring the habits, processes and objectives of email marketers. Participants will receive an advance copy of the in-depth report. Last year's survey collected responses from over 800 marketers.

Email marketers know that smaller list segments and decreased frequency often lead to higher engagement, but during this year's holiday season many ignored that advice - and saw metrics rise as a result. Best Buy, for example, trimmed its list from 32.6 to 32.3 million, but tripled the number of messages it sent. Inbox placement rose slightly to 97% and open rate nosed upwards as well, from 9.4% to 9.6%. 

Nielsen's latest report on Share of Mobile Time by Activity finds that texting (14.1%) and social networks (10.2%) capture the greatest share. Mobile users spend 5.3% of their time in email, ahead of web surfing (3.3%), mapping (2.8%) and the camera (0.9%). By contrast, consumers spend 7.1% of their computer time on email.

A new report by GFI Software finds that LinkedIn, PayPal and Amazon were the brands most often spoofed in spam emails containing malicious links. GFI reports that all of the scams preyed on users' belief that they were visiting authentic sites and required active participation by victims who needed to click on malicious links within the spam emails.

A report on the role of the CMO released this week by IDC notes that the chief marketer will be more concerned and consumed with data than ever before, mostly due to online channels and social chatter. Remarked an analyst who authored the report, "without exaggeration, I’ve seen more change in the CMO suite in the last year than perhaps the last 30 years combined."

A new report from NPD DisplaySearch forecasts that tablet shipments will outstrip notebooks, 240 million units to 207 million. This marks the first time that tablets will grab more than 50% market share, up from 38% in 2012 and 26% in 2011.

Zoho CRM has announced the launch of MailMagnet, a smart filtering tool that gives users a complete view of email correspondence with customers and prospects and integrates with location-aware apps and a document-management system. The tool also allows users to share email exchanged with specific customers. 

In order to help prevent phishing attacks from an unauthorized sender spoofing an email address, banks are starting to collect special branded top level domains, such as dot-citi, dot-bofa and dot-barclays. The challenge comes with consumer recognition, as end users do not know yet that these domains exist and might mistake legitimate emails for scams.

With mobile opens up 82% over last year, email marketers are turning their attention towards making the small screen's inbox as engaging as the desktop. Multimedia - animated GIFs and video - is beginning to appear in some campaigns, but adoption is stunted due to device and OS fragmentation, large file sizes, and a compromised viewing experience on a mobile device. 

Many Yahoo Mail users are complaining of accounts being hacked beginning last night, which may be the result of a hacker uploading a video to YouTube demonstrating how to compromise a Yahoo account by leveraging a DOM-Based XSS vulnerability. Yahoo is investigating the situation but has not to any specific vulnerability.