Rob Luke joins the ICO today as Deputy Commissioner (Policy). He was previously British High Commissioner to Malta, and has also served overseas in Brazil and Paris as well as in policy roles at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London.

The education minister Richard Bruton has become the first member of cabinet to say he will no longer use his private email account for official government business. Last month it emerged that seven ministers, including taoiseach Enda Kenny, used private emails for some official correspondence. The government insists that there is nothing prohibiting this, but is reviewing the practice.

Hundreds of NetApp customers were peeved to find they had accidentally been added to the CC field of an email, resulting in a "spamaggeddon" of messages. The communique was intended as a support bulletin regarding a previous version of Windows. The last we heard from our customer, about 300 emails had been sent.

Email marketing has traditionally consisted of written content -- after all, it's an email. However, Forbes found that brands who used video in their email marketing campaigns saw a 50% increased click-through rate, 50% more sharing and forwarding, and a 50% increase in time that users spent reading the email. Video also helped them attain a better brand image and more customer loyalty.

One of the most common myths that has plagued digital marketers for years is taking a "bad" email unsubscribe rate as a sign of failure. The reality is that unsubscribers are doing the work for you and cleaning your list of people that have lost interest.

Want a higher return on your email campaigns and increasing open rates? AI automatically does this. With clever time optimisation, AI uses behavioural data and learning algorithms to identify the best time of day to trigger an email for each individual recipient, ensuring the message is sent at the exact time the customer is most likely to engage.

Saturday January 28, 2017 marks the eleventh annual Data Protection Day. To celebrate, the ICO will highlight information rights and privacy issues over the next two days. "We'll be focusing on GDPR and encouraging businesses and other organisations to get ready for the new legislation coming in May next year," the data watchdog promised.

"Companies need to focus on the fact that emails will be read on mobile, so they should be formatted as such. Campaign Monitor reckons that 53% of emails are read on mobile, so why are businesses sending out emails not formatted for that platform? Rarely do I see emails that are formatted and written in order to drive conversions on mobile." -- Martin Teasdale, founder, Harvest Digital.

A new product or an update is a perfect email message to broadcast to your subscribers. Make sure you create and convey the excitement you're feeling about this new release so your subscribers feel the same.

Most out-of-office messages are a generic courtesy email leading to a dead end. Successful people see out-of-office emails as an opportunity to not just be courteous, but to add value and continue to make an impact, even when they are not around. Remember, you are your best advocate. Take advantage of an easy opportunity to keep people updated on what you are doing.