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Back in the day, when Mitesh Patel was introduced to computers for the first time, he immediately knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Growing up, Patel developed the skills of a very few full stack technology developers by mastering everything from systems administration, networking, security, enterprise systems architecture to data center management and finally contingency planning and scaling. With his passion for entrepreneurship and penchant to enhance his technology skills, Patel laid the cornerstone of Privi—an innovator of SMS/MMS marketing. Governed by a mission to power brands and public figures to reach their global affinity groups in a most personal way, Privi delivers international and world-class content through its software solutions for mobile marketing.
While it’s difficult to manage multiple social media outlets, traditional marketing is expensive and doesn’t provide trackable ROI, businesses struggle in reaching to their relevant audience. This is precisely what Privi intends to change with SMS/MMS. “Privi has essentially unleashed the true power of text to enable brands and public figures reach global affinity groups and fan base, and solve market problems for many multi-billion dollar industries,” says Patel, Chairman and CEO of Privi. The company leverages its proprietary hybrid technology to embed videos, audios, pictures, app-like plug-ins, and credit card processing directly in the body of the text, helping clients generate multiple revenue streams while growing loyalty and brand value.
Privi caters to the entire market spectrum with its two powerful brands for SMS/ MMS marketing—WeText (B2B) and Privi (B2C). The two brands are aimed at generating awareness and driving traffic, long-term customer retention, and increasing sales conversion and customer loyalty. WeText enables businesses of all sizes including skyscrapers, restaurants, and coffee shops to interact directly with customers, members, and organizational networks through their cell phone. It allows clients to customize, activate, and manage mass communications, special offers, surveys, scheduling, tickets, and internal group messaging from a single dashboard. WeText’s recent plug-in for WordPress now provides seamless access to WeText services, directly from any WordPress based website. “Now over 75 Million businesses can text their customers directly from the comfort of their own website. That’s what I call easy!” says Patel. In addition, WeText’s SaaS-based tiered pricing model has displayed an amazing ROI with open rate up to 95 percent, redemption rate 10X higher than any other marketing, and URL click rate of over 36 percent. The solution’s built-in two-way text chat service allows clients to increase customer engagement and loyalty while providing excellent customer service.
While WeText is tailored for businesses, Privi focuses on delivering specialized services for celebrities, public figures, nonprofits, and brands. “Today, brands are crippled with too many social media outlets, limited and fragmented reach to followers,” expresses Patel. While email-based fan clubs and individual celebrity apps have proven its own inefficiencies in reaching global audiences, Privi combines followers from all social media outlets into one central mobile database, delivers messages directly into the palms of the followers, and provides a codified way to boost revenue. Along with providing the same advantages as WeText, Privi possesses an innovative revenue share model where a client gets paid first without the interference of unwanted media, intermediaries or algorithms, thus resulting in a higher margin for the client.
Time and again, Privi has displayed prowess in assisting numerous brands (including United Nations, Lockheed Martin, L’Oreal, BASF, and Tournament of Roses), and celebrities connect with their fans having a reach of over 6 billion cell phones worldwide in over 140 countries. A multiple Grammy nominee rap icon, Kendrick Lamar, leveraged the solution to support a donation drive for the M.I.T. (minorities in technology) STEM program for at-risk youth and those facing unemployment, homelessness, incarceration, and addiction. In partnership with video and virtual reality production house Prost Global, Privi live-streamed the special ceremony featuring Compton Mayor Aja Brown. By texting the four-letter code STEM to 48421, fans received the live video feed free and had the option to pledge a donation. Being able to provide fans with exclusive access to this event, and the opportunity to raise donation for an important cause manifests the prowess of Privi in the marketing realm.
Established as more than just an SMS text service, Privi’s full custom options allow brands to manage multiple campaigns and promotions with transaction enabled messaging while fulfilling their audiences’ demand for authentic and privileged content. “We will continue to be a strategic marketing partner with laser focus on using technology to create emotionally charged relationships that turn into revenue,” concludes Patel.
