This is part of our new “Interesting” feature “we announced in April” but then lost track of. If you have an “interesting” site you think we should feature let us know.

I asked Al Sajoo, Vice President & CTO of “MVive Media Group” why MVive was interesting:

One Degree: Who needs you?

Everyone needs MVive — businesses who want to build relationships with their loyal customers while also gaining new customers; and consumers looking for exclusive deals and timely, meaningful communications with their favourite brands.

One Degree: Why do they need you?

Both businesses and consumers need us because we empower the consumer to control what is marketed to their mobile device while at the same time allowing businesses to go where traditional marketing does not. The power of the mobile phone lies in the need it has created to keep people constantly in touch with their world. This need is now driving the next marketing revolution as consumers and businesses also look to constantly stay in touch.

One Degree: Why are you interesting?

This mutual benefit to both businesses and consumers is what makes us so interesting. Companies no longer have to waste resources on creating and delivering unwanted marketing messages; and the consumer can conveniently request and access “wanted” marketing messages faster and more conveniently. MVive believes email marketing is about as good as cheap tires on a Ferrari. The Ferrari being the consumer holding tremendous value and extreme potential only to be insulted by the ridicules of spam. Marketing using MVive lacks spam or spam-style content. Businesses can not just simply send a message to every subscriber. Each message is specifically targeted to reflect value and relevance to that given consumer. What makes MVive interesting is the same as what makes MVive exciting — _technology_ — mobile technology that increases the business’ ROI while leaving the consumer in the driver’s seat in regards to what marketing they see.

One Degree: How do you make money?

MVive generates income from two separate services. The first, Mobile Conversion Service, is aimed at converting business email databases to permission-based mobile ready databases. The second, Moupon tm and Movite tm services, are aimed at offering text-based mobile coupons for use at over 500 retailers (and growing). MVive is a free service to consumers and guarantees zero charge for downloading Moupons on their cellular phone. Consumers can also receive these free coupons and offers automatically by subscribing to Movite, a mobile subscription that allows them to select which businesses they would like to automatically receive offers from. All income is generated from the businesses who choose to use our services. With that said, MVive makes these services using this new medium very affordable. Unlike other so-called mobile marketing systems, MVive doesn’t rely on renting high cost shortcodes.

One Degree: What is your mission?

Our mission is to bring forth a change in the electronic marketing medium by providing guaranteed delivery, and guaranteed viewing of relevant information by the right people. We want to provide an exceptional quality of service using a legitimate method of leveraging mobile devices for the common benefit of consumers and businesses.

One Degree: Where are you?

Geographically speaking, we are in Toronto. Theoretically speaking however, we are in the perfect place right now because businesses find our service “innovative and effective” while consumers find us to be “cool and useful”.

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Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on July 31, 2006.