IBM Verse, the company's latest email service, optimizes a user's email inbox the way that a personal assistant might by using data intelligence to help organize messages, create task lists and draft responses based on previous interactions. The tool is also well integrated with social media and helps identify the relationships between sender and receiver based on their social relations. IBM Verse can even transform email content into social media posts.

Developers at the tech startup TouchMail has designed a new app with the intention of making email more fun and colorful for Windows tablets. TouchMail is made for the touchscreen and allows users to pinch in and zoom out on their inbox in order to organize messages without opening them. A user can organize these visual messages into task lists and save files to external accounts such as Dropbox.

The Central Intelligence Agency has proposed a new email retention policy. The idea is that the department would destroy every email except for the ones sent by its top 22 officials. The proposal is now in the hands of the National Archives for review.

Fifty-four percent of publishing companies report that email marketing is a major pain point, according to a new from FOLIO and Lyris. The research also revealed that 42 percent of publishers report having difficulties with dynamic content/personalization and 41 percent have issues with list maintenance. Other pain points that marketers reported in the survey included: mobile optimization (33 percent), analytics (33 percent), segmentation (30 percent) and content automation (29 percent).

Email data analytics firm Return Path has acquired its competitor Motley Bunch in a deal whose terms were not disclosed. The acquisition will expand Return Path's marketing intelligence tools and give the company new ways to generate consumer data. The company has also hired former Nielsen executive Eric Weinberg as COO.

Yahoo Mail is bringing back its online stationery feature that it removed last year. The company took away the service finding it a bit "old and dated" but based on customer demand, the old feature will return. This time around, Yahoo is partnering with Paperless Post to create 50 stationery designs that can be used directly within a Yahoo email.

Microsoft has signed two new government agencies to use Office 365 for cloud based email. The office of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Labor (DOL) are moving to the new platform from their legacy email systems. This is part of an overall trend in which government agencies are working with the cloud.

Police officials in Flordia have warned citizens to beware a new email scam that claims to come from a "professional hit man." The email claims that a friend has hired the recipient to kill the person that received the email and threatens that the recipient is being watched. The spammer tries to get the recipient to click on a malicious link with the words "contact my email if you want to live."

Apple is already in the holiday spirit with its email marketing efforts. The computer giant sent out an email this week promoting holiday gift ideas. The theme of the email is "From one gift come many," and Apple demonstrates how its products keep on giving. The iPad Air 2 is the top billed item in the email.

WeMail, a new email app for Android, has set out to solve the problem of the busy inbox. Unlike other inbox organizing tools which organize messages by category, WeMail organizes the inbox by sender. The idea is to help email users prioritize their conversations with specific people and see all of their recent communications with that person in one place.