With Message Systems, Kaixin001 was able to upgrade to industry-leading scalability, efficiency and performance, as well as improved deliverability.

These are the things that worry me if the breaches continue. They jeopardize our ability to generate revenue and build customer relationships as CMOs, putting our individual and collective success at serious risk.

I’m in San Diego this week with Barbara Burlington, our Director of Marketing Communications, for the Online Marketing Summit. Yesterday was the first full day of the conference, and I was impressed with the number of high quality sessions going on.

These issues of preference management have morphed and expanded over time as social media, smartphones and proliferating message channel choices have created so many more opportunities for businesses to reach out and communicate with customers.

No, credit cards aren’t going away any time soon, but consumers are finding it easier and easier to make credit card payments just using their phone. In May we first started hearing about Google Wallet, and I was a little surprised to learn that as of earlier this week one out of every four Starbucks card transactions was made using a mobile phone.

I just came across one of Microsoft’s many visions of the future. Notice how much of this vision depends on reliable, transactional messaging that can bridge protocols, devices and networks, to zip from virtually anywhere to virtually anywhere, any time.

I’d argue that SMS has become the best communication channel for customer support interactions. With SMS text you can engage in conversation, but communicate at the pace you want. It can be done in spare moments and doesn’t require continuous attention – unlike a phone conversation where you can’t drop off for 30 seconds or a minute.

It’s great to see Amazon finally coming around and seeing the light on multi-channel, though it very much appears that SNS is more of a bolt-on to the existing email service than a fully integrated messaging capability.