Consumers want a more interesting relationship with brands and think highly of virtual techniques promised by evolving technology. New DMA customer engagement research reveals that relevancy beats personalisation -- 40% are interested in a service that reminded them about upcoming birthdays and gave relevant suggestions. This rises to two-thirds of 25-34s.

Content upgrades are a simple, yet effective way to generate leads directly from your articles. If you are providing useful content, readers will appreciate opportunities to learn more. One of the best ways to provide this benefit is by tactfully placing a box within your article content. This is where you will use explicit calls to action to entice your readers to upgrade their content.

Free certificate authority Let's Encrypt has revealed the email addresses of up to 7,618 users to each other in an email informing them of updates to its subscriber agreement. In a post apologising for the error, the service noted that the incident wasn't as bad as it could have been, affecting only 1.9% of the 383,000 users it had intended to email.

A former HSBC Holdings equity derivatives trader was awarded a EUR56,300 payout in a French unfair-dismissal lawsuit after the bank fired him for sending client data to his personal Yahoo Inc. e-mail address. The Paris employment tribunal ordered HSBC to pay Ben Lazimy the compensation, which falls far short of the $2.6 million he was demanding.

When writing your email, a good strategy would be to optimise it for mobile viewers. This is because more than half of your potential attendees will be reading your invitation with a mobile device. Just like your landing page, your email should get straight to the point and highlight the benefits of attending your event. Include a social sharing link to so your audience can invite friends.

Digital marketing, content management and digital commerce solutions provider Episerver has announced the launch of its integrated A/B testing feature. The integrated capability is aimed at improving digital experience optimisation and marketing campaign results for Web and social copy, email marketing campaigns and remarketing ads, among others.

Email isn't dying. It's inexpensive, easy to use, and has endless potential. It's also constantly changing -- most notably with traditional batch and blast messages no longer being relevant. Fortunately, there are a lot of new and inventive ways we can better connect with our customers. A few of these include personalisation, segmentation, and geotargeting,

Criminals who steal large sums of money by intercepting email communications between house buyers and their solicitors are developing more sophisticated tactics as awareness of the danger increases. Until now, fraudsters have typically sent last-minute emails purporting to be from house buyers' solicitors to request that funds be sent to a new account.

Email marketing is the poorer cousin of all marketing channels. It's inexpensive, is not considered particularly sexy and has been around for a long time. However, there are several reasons why it's one of the best channels to implement and should continue to be part of your wider marketing plan and strategy.

The chairman of the football agents’ union has apologised to members after they were sent an email letter urging them to back the Remain campaign in the EU referendum. The message appeared to be an official communication from the Association of Football Agents and was endorsed by leading middleman Jon Smith.