Every day, our email inboxes are flooded with hundreds of new emails we'll never open. Yet email remains one of the highest-performing online media channels for marketers. Advertising technology is taking what it's done with display (delivering one-to-one digital advertising) and applying the approach to email marketing communications.

Bosses claim cutting email down, or even eradicating it, would boost productivity and give workers their lives back. Are they mad? My inbox is worth more to me than my address book, diary, and mobile phone rolled into one. It's my virtual handbag -- battered, overflowing, unfashionably out of date (I still use Hotmail) -- but I couldn't live without it.

A local spa has apologised to its members after sending out an email backing Brexit. On Monday, people who had signed up to messages from Sindlesham Nirvana Spa received an email inviting them to read the views of John Barley, its owner and chairman.

Studies show that frivolous activities do not harness our capacity to be productive at our optimal best. Email -- including the frivolous ones -- takes up to 23% of an employee's workday. An employee receives or sends up to 112 emails per day. There is a growing body of research on the effects of email at work. Banning email at work can dramatically increase productivity and reduce stress.

To turn first-time customers into lifetime advocates, businesses must stop treating their email subscribers like one homogenous group. Splitting up your database into groups with similar characteristics allows for targeted messaging that is more valuable to specific groups of subscribers. This segmentation allows you to determine which topics resonate best with your target audiences.

Mobile shopping is becoming an everyday activity for a significant number of consumers, new data shows, with 2.5m Brits -- 5% of adults -- saying they buy on mobile at least daily. Among 18- to-34-year-olds, the proportion buying on mobile every day was twice as high, at 10%. The findings are from a UK-wide ICM study of 2,000 people, released as part of a new report from Criteo.

The lawyer with close links to the Premier League has been fined GBP15,000 for sending "despicable" emails to the body's executive chairman, Richard Scudamore. Nicholas West, a partner in London-based DLA Piper, was also ordered to pay GBP12,000 in costs by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) tribunal today.

Before developing any marketing email, know your audience. This element alone will largely determine your success rate, although it's probably the most neglected element in marketing campaigns. You have to remember -- it's never about you, your revenue or your desires. The only way you're ever going to get maximum results is basing all your efforts on the people you serve.

Email software remains at the top of the must-have list for many marketers around the globe. According to March 2016 research on marketing technology adoption by dotmailer, email marketing was the top marketing software category used by respondents, with more than 88% mentioning the service. About two-thirds of respondents to the worldwide survey were in the UK.

The survey, commissioned by the ICO, the UK's independent data protection regulator, shows that only one in four people trust businesses with their personal information. It shows that while 53% of people said they trusted High Street banks with their information, that dropped to 36% for Government departments, 32% for high street retailers and 22% for internet brands.