Sixty-eight percent of marketers report that email marketing is core to their business strategy. according to a new report from ExactTarget. The 2014 State of Marketing Strategy survey also revealed that 46 percent of marketers said that social marketing is core to their business. The research includes 2,500 responses from marketers around the globe, 49 percent of which send 500,000 emails or more every year.

Google has denied allegations that they read the emails of former TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington in order to track down a news leak. Arrington made this accusation this week claiming that the company access his Gmail account and then fired the employee that tipped him off to the news. "Mike makes a serious allegation here - that Google opened email messages in his Gmail account to investigate a leak," Kent Walker, Google general counsel Kent Walker told re/code in a statement. "While our terms of service might legally permit such access, we have never done this and it's hard for …

Scammers could take advantage of emails being sent by Amazon and Barnes and Noble this week. The book retailers have sent out emails notifying customers that bought eBooks from April 2010 to May 2012 about rebate, in response to a price fixing lawsuit settlement. The Better Business Bureau is warning consumers to beware of fake emails taking advantage of this mass mailing.

The University of Maine at Farmington is looking into a spam email going around claiming that the university's president Kathryn Foster had died of a stroke. The email was sent from a legitimate account, but is a forgery, according to the university.The university's police and technology services teams are looking into the matter and the school is also speaking with the district attorney.

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has accused Google of going into his Gmail account to find out who had leaked a story about the company to him. Google has denied these allegations, yet they also point out that they are legally allowed to permit such access according to their terms of use. Arrington claims that the breach took place a few years back, after which he claims that his source was fired from the company after he was shown an email exchange between himself and Arrington.

YaM Labs, a Moscow-based startup, has launched a new email organizing tool for Mac users called BlinkMail. The tool helps users manage their email inboxes from their desktop. The app is inspired by gesture-based mobile apps that allow users to quickly take manage emails as they flow in assigning designations to each message such as archive, delete, reply or send to Evernote or Dropbox.

Less than 5% of email marketing messages contain a question mark in their subject lines even though customers may actually read an email addressed as a question, according to a new report from TrackMaven. The "The Stagnant State of Email" survey also revealed that 59 percent of marketing emails have subject lines with 50 characters or less. According to the study, including words like "help," "percent off," and "reminder," are not helpful and could land a marketer in the spam trap.

BlackBerry has received security clearance from the U.S. government to services to government agencies. The company's Secure Work Space product has received Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 certification. The tool will allow government agencies to use Blackberry for email, calendar, contacts, tasks, memos, browsing and document editing via iOS or Android apps.

Microsoft has warned about a new vulnerability in Microsoft Word that hackers can use to gain remote access to a user's PC. Hackers can gain access when a user opens or previews a malicious email using Outlook's default settings. A user that previews a malicious file gives the attacker complete access to the user's computer remotely.

PandoDaily has published a number of emails highlighting Apple founder Steve Jobs' frustration with Google for trying to hire Apple engineers to work for Google. The emails have come to the public record as part of an investigation by the US Justice Department. In 2005, Google co-founder Sergey Brin sent an email regarding an "irate" phone call from Jobs claiming that Google was trying to hire up Apple's Safari team. Court documents later revealed the Google was really only interested in one engineer.