While some startups have tried to get rid of email in the workplace and replace it with collaboration tools, email is actually an effective tool at work. Employees that are highly engaged in online collaboration including email perform better, according to The Harvard Business Review. The research revealed that a successful software company compared a year of anonymized email network data of its employees across the company and found that those that interacted a lot has 36 percent larger internal networks than average performers.

Email marketers began sending Valentine's Day campaigns earlier than usual this year, according to metrics from eDataSource. The research revealed that campaigns started going out about three weeks earlier than usual, rather than the week or week and a half before. Companies that send less emails through advanced targeting are seeing positive returns. The research revealed that the St. Louis Hilton and Urban Outfitters both had 30 percent open rates on Valentine's emails sent to lists of 47,000 people.

Web hosting firm HostGator has increased its daily revenues by 63 percent through its abandoned cart email strategy. The company recently tapped vendor Ve Interactive to help create a program that will draw consumers who abandoned their carts back to the site to make a purchase.

Canadian Information and Privacy watchdog has plans to educate politicians and civil servants about using personal email addresses. Using Gmail, Hotmail or BlackBerry Messenger to communicate will not protect these official communications from freedom-of-information requests. "I would acknowledge that there may be information that should have been disclosed but hasn't been because of a lack of knowledge of what the rules are," commissioner Brian Beamish told The Star.

Virgin Media customers have experienced a lot of email issues in recent months including a variety of spoofing. These users feel that a security breach may be the cause and have formed a Facebook group to share their experiences and seek answers. The company has denied a data breach despite customer claims.

Federal judge Rudolph Contreras does not approve of the State Department's slow release of Hillary Clinton's emails. At a hearing this week, he said that, "the government has put me between a rock and a hard place," commenting that he didn't approve of the State Departments delays in their release of the information.

Google has introduced new authentication features for Gmail to help flag emails that are not completely secure. The company is now identifying emails sent over insecure connections for recipients. In addition, the tech giant is warning users who sent these insecure emails with the hopes that they will improve their security.

IBM Verse is IBM's latest email tool that uses cognitive computing to help make basic emails simpler. Integrating social networking data into the email client, the email suggests automatic responses to emails based on the context and the relationship of those communicating.

Verizon's warnings about deactivating email accounts for users that haven't logged on to verizon.net in more than 180 days has some mobile customers concerned. However, users do not need to log in online, because opening the messages in an email app on an iPhone or Mac counts.

Average email click-through rate is 2.5 times higher for brands that use personalization, as compared to those firms that do not personalize emails, according to research from VentureBeat. The report also revealed that revenue from personalized emails is on average 5.7 times higher than non-personalized emails.