Although cart abandonment emails remain a hot topic, a greater focus is needed on how marketers can build more impactful emails to prompt the right consumer actions. Simply activating an automated email with some lines of copy and a link back to a site is not enough to lure consumers away from their busy lives and complete an action that a retailer wants them to take.

Customer email capture in-store is essential for any retailer -- big or small. But traditional point-of-sale collection remains cumbersome and ineffective for both consumers and retailers, and illegal in many states. Consumers demand little friction at checkout. Most avoid providing email addresses entirely to accelerate the process, although emailed receipts have improved this situation to an extent.

Just because email marketing works for one person, does not mean it would work for you as well. The right way to increase conversion depends on a number of things, most importantly your demographic and the nature of your business. Failure to realise what works for you would result in a waste of time and money, leading to high customer acquisition cost.

A fresh year presents the perfect opportunity for your brand to recap its 2016 content marketing performance: You may want to examine ways to build upon those past lucrative strategies and reexamine under-performing ones. Did you meet your goals? What new tools are available to enhance your content marketing game plan for 2017?

The way your business presents itself to consumers is important in building successful customer relations. And how better to interact with consumers than through email? Email marketing is not dead: Email marketing tactics have simply evolved. Businesses must be willing to change with them or fear getting left to rot in the spam folder.

Techdirt founder Mike Masnick often takes no prisoners when it comes to his writings about intellectual property, net neutrality, the law, and everything in between. But now Masnick finds himself the target of the same lawyer who brought down Gawker on behalf of Hulk Hogan.

Notion is a free app for Android and iOS devices that syncs with your inbox. Its latest upgrade: an Amazon Alexa skill that lets you access Notion's insights with simple voice commands. The coolest trick? Email summaries that let Alexa tell you the most most important tidbits from your backlogged inbox, or even sum long messages up into just a sentence or two.

Marketers are turning away from the direct buy button on social media in the coming year after nearly three in four reported seeing no sales after implementing them. Twenty-five percent fewer marketers are using buy buttons today than the number who were using them last year, and 40% plan to use them less in the year ahead.

With easy access to customer data, marketers need to make the most of personalisation, which has emerged as a powerful tool for effective campaigns. Marketers need to understand that customers are individuals, and although there may be commonalities, no two customers will behave in the same way.

As workers up and down the country return to their desks this morning, many won't feel as if they've had a winter break at all. Only a few brave, Zen-like individuals will have truly been able to 'switch off.' And in this age, all that means not checking their emails.