The official support account tweeted: "Sorry if you're having problems accessing BT Yahoo Mail this afternoon, we're aware of a problem & are working with Yahoo! to fix asap." Enraged customers have flooded social media to complain about the problems.

Among the small to medium-sized business executives surveyed who projected increased marketing budgets in 2017, 59% said marketing on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will primarily drive that growth. The next channel projected to drive digital marketing spend in 2017 is said to be mobile marketing (50%), followed by email marketing (42%).

We check our phones dozens -- even hundreds -- of times per day, and open most of our emails (53%) on mobile devices. So for marketers, having a comprehensive mobile email strategy isn't just a best practice, it's table stakes. When your emails are created with mobile readers in mind, they can grab subscribers' attention -- whether they're running errands or sitting in the back seat of an Uber.

In 2010, Apple introduced the iPhone 4, which had a Retina screen with four times the pixel density of previous screens. Now high-DPI screens are everywhere, not just in Apple products. However, brands have been slow to adapt to this reality. Nearly half of brands never use retina-optimized images in their emails.

2017 is the final year for businesses to adapt to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) before enforcement begins in May 2018. However, there are many other factors complicating the situation for the UK. The vote to leave the EU is clearly among them but the EU Commission is also in the process of revising the ePrivacy Directive and replacing it with the ePrivacy Regulation.

According to the DMA's latest benchmarking report, email remains in good health, with 41% of marketers rating it as the best-performing channel. Now at 98%, email delivery rate is at its highest ever, increasing by 11 percentage points since 2010. Lastly, despite some decline in recent years, unique open rates and unique click-to-open rates remain steady.

As we move into 2017, marketing executives and departments are busy finalising their strategic plans for the coming year. Their email marketing efforts are likely front and centre as studies continue to show that email is the most dependable way to reach customers and has the highest return on investment.

So you'd like to inform your entire email list of a sale, but this is something that you do on a weekly basis. It's automatic, but it works. You either have free shipping promotions, 15% off deals, or other campaigns. Try honing a list of emails that are completely personalised to either what your customers have browsed, or bought in the past -- depending on your type of business.

Stories with clear inciting incidents that disrupt protagonists' lives will lead to many questions in the mind of the viewer or reader. That's some great engagement that can lead to higher open rates. Other ways to improve storytelling in email marketing include originality, universal themes, and respect for the audience. It can be easy to forget that consumers, like us, are people.

Data is the source of insights about customers and potential customers that brands, advertisers and marketers can use to have relevant dialogue. According to DMA's recent Customer Engagement research into retail, 33% of customers prefer to receive tailored offers and deals from their favourite brands above any other type of content.