British fashion retailer Harvey Nichols has partnered with Lyris to help power its email marketing communications. Sandrine Deveaux, head of e-commerce at Harvey Nichols, explained that the retailer would be using Lyris HQ to create integrated email marketing campaigns that will take advantage of segmentation, automation and measurement. The retailer, which is headquartered in London, has stores in Europe. the Middle East and Asia.

Email marketing services company Constant Contact has added new content creation integrations to its email marketing tool, giving more support to small-to-medium businesses. The upgrade allows SMBs to create email marketing campaigns with videos and image attachments. In addition, the upgrade lets businesses manage their Constant Contact lists alongside their social networking accounts directly from their mobile devices. Constant Contact customers can now build entry forms for sweepstakes and integrate this into their email programs.

The ACLU claimed today that the criminal division of the IRS "has long taken the position that the IRS can read your emails without a warrant," reports PCMag.com. According to the story, the civil rights organization came to this conclusion after going through 247 pages of IRS records that the agency received via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The ACLU is investigating whether the IRS gets a warrant to read someone's email or text messages. The IRS follows the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which lets investigators access an email that's been stored on an email provider's server …

Small groups, Nonprofits with less than 100,000 email addresses saw their email list size grow by 35 percent in 2012, according to the "2013 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study" by M+R Strategic Services and nonprofit association Nonprofit Technology Network. However, this group of nonprofits also had the most list churn. According to the report, 23 percent of the names on small organizations' email lists became unreachable over the year. However, the study did not conclude that list growth led to churn. The report also revealed that email list size was up 15 percent for nonprofits in general, no matter what size.

Consumers are getting more comfortable logging into retail websites using their existing online profiles, according to new data from Janrain, a social media login technology provider. According to the report, in the first quarter of this year, 57 percent of consumers logging into Janrain's retail clients' sites used their Facebook logins to shop in Q1 2013; 28 percent of consumers logged into retailers' web sites with their Google identities; and 7 percent logged in with their Yahoo accounts. Using their existing social accounts gives retailers access to additional data that can be used in marketing efforts.

Reports that IRS-related spam messages are going around have been popping up over the last few weeks. The latest is an email that claims to be from the IRS and reads, "I am sending this email to announce: After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax return of: $273.48." This is a phishing scam. The IRS does not send emails. The agency recommends deleting the spam message or forwarding it to phishing@irs.gov to report it.

Unroll.me, a web app that lets consumers organize email newsletter subscriptions and subscribe and unsubscribe from email publications, has updated its service with a new interface bringing full support for Yahoo mail. In addition, the update lets consumers control which emails land in their inbox, and it also brings a mobile friendly interface so that consumers can manage their email newsletters on the go. The new layout also gives users more control over their individual subscriptions.

Sixty-one percent of email marketers admitted that their performance is 'poor' or 'average', and only four percent describes themselves as 'excellent', revealed the Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2013, which came out this week. According to the report, 12 per cent of marketers admitted to spending no time on their email strategy, and 27 percent of marketers said that they spent no time on email optimization.

Good content marketing is the kind of work that a consumer will want to email to their friend, argues Alexander Jukowitz, in a piece for Ad Age. "If brands want to become media platforms, they have to accept some of the costs of being a publisher," writes Jukowitz. What makes consumers want to share with their friends? Look to Lincoln Motor Co.'s collaboration with Beck and Nokia Music's collaboration with the Sundance Film Festival and production company Somesuch & Co.

While newer channels may attract headlines, email and search won out as the top channels for digital marketers in the Econsultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2013. According to the report, 22 percent of marketers say that email marketing delivers "excellent" ROI, and 44 percent say that think the channel delivers "good" ROI. But email isn't without its challenges. Half of the marketers interviewed for the survey explained that the quality of the email database can be a barrier to the channel. Forty-two percent of people said that a lack of strategy can be a barrier and 23 percent of marketers …