Worried about the effect of Gmail’s tabs on e-mail behavior? Justine Jordan crunched a few numbers and found that the effect could be smaller than predicted: “Gmail opens only account for about 4% of total email opens, and less than half (41%) of those opens are occurring in email clients that support Gmail tabs.”

“Generations X and Y are far more likely to give online, and as many Baby Boomers say they give online as via direct mail.” That’s according to a new report from Blackbaud.

The study also confirms that donors older than 49 are a better target for fundraisers: they represent 69 percent of all charitable giving. Those under 32, meanwhile, give just 11 percent of donations.

The “one weird trick” ads and their absurd-looking landing pages work well because they focus on human psychology, Alex Kaufman reports:

“Research on persuasion shows the more arguments you list in favor of something, regardless of the quality of those arguments, the more that people tend to believe it,” [Harvard marketing professor Michael] Norton says. “Mainstream ads sometimes use long lists of bullet points—people don’t read them, but it’s persuasive to know there are so many reasons to buy.” OK, but if more is better, then why only one trick? “People want a simple solution that has a ton of support.”

Marketers—even those not selling diet drugs and miracle cures—should be paying attention.

The new Gmail inbox design, which diverts marketing e-mails to a separate “Promotions” tab, could pose a threat to e-mail marketers, Jordan Cohen writes.

While it is still too early to tell what the impact on open and click-through rates will be, marketers are right to be concerned that emails placed in a separate tab will be out of sight, and may also be out of mind (or, in the very least, not top of mind). By last count (June 2012), there were 425 million Gmail users in the world, and it may be up to half a billion by now — so the effect can potentially be substantial.

For now, users’ ability to disable the tabs and the increased use of mobile devices to check e-mail could limit the damage, he adds. Kimbia suggests a few workarounds as well.

But perhaps the bigger threat is that other providers follow Google in hiding marketing messages from recipients.

This, from a survey of young donors, should come as no surprise:

The donors also prefer to give online, with 84 percent saying they want to give through a Web site. The second most-popular way to give, with only 48 percent of donors, was to make a donation in person at an event.

It’s yet another reason to make sure you have a solid website and an easy-to-use online donation process.

But don’t rework your fundraising program just yet. The real question is not what young people claim about their giving behavior—people have a tendency to lie about such things on surveys—but whether they actually give at all.