Marketing automation services firm Bluecore has raised $21 million in its series B round of investment. The company has been growing its investment significantly over the past six months. The company's tool allows marketers to use behavioral data to personalize customer engagements particularly through email.

A bride-to-be used thousands of fake email addresses in order to win a contest from Wedding magazine, which offers a GBP25,000 wedding prize. The bride created fake email addresses so that she could vote for herself repeatedly. UK advertising watchdog discovered the deception by following up on several complaints.

Email vendor SendGrid is rolling out marketing features to complement its email developer platform. SendGrid Marketing Campaigns uses SendGrid's existing email platform to offer tools for marketers. The service will compete with Campaign Monitor and MailChimp.

Hair salon Ouidad has found success by asking customers if they'd like to opt into an email newsletter, rather than just assuming they wanted to be added because the email address was in the database. The salon recently launched an initiative sending customers an email saying, "May we add you to the list? (Subscribe & save on Ouidad.com)" with the copy follows through with, "we don't want to assume...that you'd like to receive emails from Ouidad.com."

Mozilla may be looking to separate itself from its email, chat and news client Thunderbird. The company built the service in 2004, but hasn't updated it since 2012. "I believe Thunderbird should would thrive best by separating itself from reliance on Mozilla development systems and in some cases, Mozilla technology," Mozilla chairperson Mitchell Baker wrote in a memo posted on Mozilla's public governance forum. "The current setting isn't stable, and we should start actively looking into how we can transition in an orderly way to a future where Thunderbird and Firefox are un-coupled."

The Email Privacy Act, a privacy bill that will help overrule the outdated 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), will be heard by The House Judiciary Committee today. The bill has gained support of 300 cosponsors from across the aisle in the Senate. If passed, the law would require law enforcement to get a warrant to access citizen emails older than 180 days.

Web.com's affiliated brand Network Solutions has released a new tool to help small businesses beef up their email encryption. The service is called Secure Mail with Guard Encryption. The tool allows users to add an extra layer of email security to help ensure the privacy of their communications.

Email drove 25.1 percent of e-commerce sales on Black Friday according to a report from Custora. An Adobe Systems report found that email marketing accounted for more than 15 percent of sales between Thanksgiving and Sunday. In addition, Adobe's report revealed that the number of sales that resulted from shoppers clicking from an email and buying jumped 25 percent over the same period last year.