Overview of Macedonian Ecommerce Conference 2018 f PDF

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CONFERENCE OVERVIEW
Prepared by: Nina Angelovska and Damjan Dano
1st Annual E-commerce Conference
by Macedonian eCommerce Association
October 26th 2018, Hotel Marriott, Skopje Macedonia...

Description

 CONFERENCE OVERVIEW Prepared by: Nina Angelovska and Damjan Dano

 1st Annual Ecommerce Conference by Macedonian eCommerce Association October 26th 2018, Hotel Marriott, Skopje Macedonia  

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS  About the Organizer

2

About the Conference

2

Official Website

3

Sponsors & Partners

3

Media Partners

4

Tickets

5

Ticket Sales Promotion of the Conference After Conference Promotional Activities

6 7 9

Participants

10

Evaluation/Feedback from Participants

10

Speakers and Panels Evaluation Five Main Conclusions From the Conference

11 13

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About the Organizer Building the Future of E-commerce The Macedonian e-Commerce Association is the first and only association aiming towards inclusive e-commerce. Our mission is creating a future for e-commerce growth and success in the country. The goals of e-Commerce Macedonia are to support the interests of e-commerce companies, contribute to the knowledge and diffusion of e-commerce, including related services and technologies, and to bring down the barriers that limit the development of the sector. Through activities as diverse as training and research, lobbying, legal & fiscal support the organization aims to build strong e-Commerce environment in Macedonia. The association was formed in December 2017 and in less than a year it managed to gain trust of almost 50 companies that became its members and supporters. It raised its awareness massively through its educational activities, media presence in TV shows and interviews hence raising the awareness of the importance of e-commerce for Macedonia's economic development.

About the Conference The theme of the first conference was “eCommerce: The eFuture for eMacedonia!”,inspiredbyour strong belief that a better future for our country can be created by embracing digitalization and becoming a smart society, and e-commerce is an integral part of such society. E-commerce can be a key driver for economic growth, new job openings and increase productivity. Our mission for this conference was to raise awareness, to share knowledge and to tackle the challenges standing on its way. This conference brought the key stakeholders in one place to connect, meet and share knowledge and experience. A conference is only as good as the people that  attend and the standard of the content that is presented. We believe diversity is the cornerstone of progress and we  were thrilled to have an amazing mix of participants at the conference, varying from middle management and senior executives of different industries and institutions, to entrepreneurs and founders and MSMEs. We put our greatest efforts in creating a comprehensive agenda. The conference included four main topics: development, payments, delivery and marketing, organized in seven keynote talks in e-commerce development and marketing and four interactive panel discussions focused on the e-commerce players, payments and delivery. We had the pleasure of having 30 experienced and insightful speakers coming from eight countries. We know that content is king and we were aiming to cover as much valuable content as we can in today’s agenda in a natural flow for the participants. We started with the general landscape of e-commerce in Macedonia followed by some warm welcome addresses from our distinguished speakers. Then we heard more about the opportunities and challenges in EU for the Macedonian e-commerce companies. A panel discussion with the e-commerce players followed addressing their challenges, best practices and experiences. The panel for the e-commerce companies was divided in two parts, the first one focused on the pure play e-retailers and the second one was dedicated to the giant companies where e-commerce represents an additional sales channel. After that we dived deeper into the three key fields: marketing, payments and delivery. If a company wants to sell online it has to attract, engage and retain customers (marketing), collect money (payments) and ship the product (delivery). That’s why we believed that our agenda should follow that order. 2

Official Website In order to  centralize the promotion of the conference, as well as to offer the ability to purchase tickets online and allow registration of attendees, the website www.EcommerceConference.mk was built and used as a central hub forthepromotionalactivities. The site integrated a virtual POS terminal from HalkBank and allowed online sales of tickets and books. The website was available in both Macedonian and English version and beside the information on the registration process, it featured counter that displayed remaining days to the conference, content about the agenda, speakers and sponsors.

Sponsors & Partners This conference would not be possible without our general partner Mastercard, who is supporting the work of The Macedonian E-commerce Association since its establishment; our gold sponsor DHL; our silver sponsors  Accent  , Sport   Vision and EVN; and also without the great help and assistance  offered  by  the  Fund  for  Innovations  and  Technology  (FITR)  and  Swiss   Contact. We were happy to have Faktor Trust and Eco Logistic Services as bronze sponsors of the conference. We are thankful to all of them and to the many other partners and supporters that participated in the organization of the 1st Macedonian eCommerce Conference.

 Each of the sponsors, received a corresponding number of free tickets and media and marketing exposure. As a general partner, Mastercard received 50 tickets, while Gold partners received 5 tickets, Silver partners 3, Bronze sponsors 2 tickets and based on their sponsorship level they received promotion on social channels, via PR texts, newsletters and branding at the conference venue and on other conference materials. Beside the main sponsors and partners, the conference received help and support from many other local companies that contributed in various ways.

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Media Partners We created media partnerships with targeted and some highly segmented media outlets in order to promote the conference via advertisements, PR outreach and display ads. The key media partners consisted of  the mostvisitedwebsitein Macedonia - the news aggregation service Time.mk, the largest technology media  portal IT.mk   and the finance andinvestment online media source Bankarstvo.mk, as well as some of the most popular Macedonian radio stations—Kanal 77 and City Radio. 

Beside these chosen media partners, the conference was open and freely accessible to any news outlet  that requested an accreditation via an official Media Accreditation form, which was featured on the official website of the conference. All accreditation requests were carefully examined by the conference team and the selected outlets received a formal invitation and details for attending upon approval.

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4

Tickets The tickets  for the conference were sold almost  completely  online on the official website EcommerceConference.mk - with two available payment methods, via payment card or invoice, in two separate phases: PHASE 1: EARLY BIRD  The Early Bird phase offered two options:: 1.

Single ticket for a price of 69 Euros and, 2. Combo of a ticket + the book “Actionable Gamification” from the keynote speaker and author Yu-Kai Chou for a price of 89 Euros.

The Early bird tickets were open for sale starting from 8th of September until 25th of September, 2018.  PHASE 2: REGULAR PRICE  After the Early Bird sale, starting from 26th of September, 2018, tickets were sold at regular price. There were three available options: 1.

Single ticket for a price of 99 Euros, 2. Combo of a single ticket + “Actionable Gamification” book from the keynote speaker Yu-Kai Chou for a price of 116 Euros. 3. Bundle of 1 + 1 single tickets with a discount of 24 EUR off from the second ticket, total being 173 EUR.  The Regular price tickets were sold from 26th of September, 2018 until they were completely SOLD OUT on October 15th, 2018.

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AETM MEMBERS COMPLIMENTARY TICKETS All members of the Macedonian eCommerce Association received a free ticket. Premium and honorary members received two to three tickets. The complementary tickets were delivered in a form of a coupon code (with 100% discount) and members were invited to register online on the conference website their participants. The total number of registered participants from the members amounted 48. Additionally, the total number of participants who registered for free, including complimentary tickets to sponsors, partners, media partners, speakers and organizations like Masit, Usaid etc. amounted 66. The total number of participants who attended the event for free amounted 124.

SPEAKERS COMPLIMENTARY TICKETS The speakers received one complimentary ticket to register a guest who will accompany them. In the same way as with the AETM members, the complimentary ticket was issued as a coupon code (with 100% discount) and the company representatives were invited to register online using the discount coupon. In this way, there were 10 registered participants.

 PROMOTIONAL COUPONS In order to initiate sales, the sales team members were allowed a limited usage of coupons with 10, 15 or 30% discounts that they could use at their discretion in the promotional period. For that purpose, various coupons were created for AmCham members, MASIT members and other NGOs and organisations.

MASTERCARD GUESTS As a general partner Mastercard received 50 tickets free of charge, which they used to invite their associates  from  financial institutions with the goal of increasing the knowledge and level of informedness about eCommerce among people from banks and financial institutions.

Ticket Sales As mentioned above, ticket sales were sold mostly on the conference website. A promotional deal for 10 tickets was featured on Grouper.mk. In addition Karti.com.mk requested to sell tickets and was approved but no tickets were sold via this channel. Few bulk ticket orders from bigger corporations were requested and processed manually by the AETM office directly via invoice.

Channels for Total Paid Orders Online      

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 Based on the statistics, payments via invoice was more used payment method compared to payments with cards. % of Total Paid Orders Online Payments via Invoice

Payments via Credit Cards

52%

47%

Promotion of the Conference The conference event was promoted via various channels, among which: ●

Local Media PR Outreach AVE value: 27.300 EUR1 ○ 4 PR texts ○ Excellent media coverage on web portals and TV stations ○ 2 TV appearances ○ 78 POSITIVE articles published ○ 2 ½ months of communication ○ HUGE media interest for attendance

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Radio ○ Kanal 77 - PR and Radio Commercial, ○ City Radio - PR and Radio Commercial.

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Television Interviews ○ TV 24 ○ Telma Tv - Utrinska Emisija

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Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns via MailChimp ○ Campaign 1: Early Bird [link], ○ Campaign 2: Early Bird 1 Day Left [link], ○ Campaign 3: Early Bird Last Day [link], ○ Campaign 4: Agenda Announcement [link], ○ Campaign 5: Special offer [link], ○ Campaign 6: See you Tomorrow [link], ○ Campaign 7: Post-Conference Follow-up [link].

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Web Banners ○ IT.mk ○ Time.mk ○ Bankarstvo.mk ○ Grouper.mk (baner in daily newsletter campaigns) ○ Bi.mk

1 Advertising Value Equivalent - AVE refers to the cost of buying the space taken up by a particular article, had the article been an advertisement. 7

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Facebook Advertising ○ Through the Macedonian eCommerce Association page [link], ○ Through the Facebook event page for the conference [link], ○ Through Facebook Ads including remarketing.

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Instagram ○ Through the Macedonian eCommerce Association profile [link], ○ Through Ads placed in Instagram stories and feed.

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LinkedIn ○ Through the Macedonian eCommerce Association page [link]. 

All of the promotional activities included free coverage through media partnerships or PR efforts, except the Facebook and Instagram Ads,forwhich a dedicated budget of $620 for promotion of the conference was spent out of which $500 for pre-conference promotion and $120 for after conference. The paid efforts on Facebook and Instagram during the pre-conference promotion generated total reach of 229.886 and 616.995 impressions. 

After Conference Promotional Activities After the event, the following promotional activities were undertaken: ● ●

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PR article “Five Main Conclusions From the Ecommerce Conference” (link) Evaluation survey for the participants on the Conference [sent an email to the participants via Mailchimp] (link) Video of the Ecommerce Conference [promoted via AETM's social media channels] (link)

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Participants The event itself hosted over 400 people including speakers, organizational staff, media representatives and attendees, from which 370 were registered attendees coming from the following entities: ●

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Еmployees and management attendees from over 120 private companies and corporations, Representatives from over 7 banks, Representatives from 6 different local and international NGOs, Representatives from 8 governmental institutions, Participants from 6 different educational institutions.

Evaluation/Feedback from Participants In order to draw conclusions, as well as to fully understand all aspects of the conference a survey for evaluation was conducted. The results from the survey will also provide a basis for improvement for next  year. The participants got an email inviting them to provide their feedback the after the conference. The survey was delivered in a targetednewslettertoallparticipants of the conference, with a follow-up reminder 4 days after the initial email. The response rate amounted over 25% or 93 of the attendees took part and provided answers for all aspects  of  the conference including the overall organization, location, feedback on each of the panel discussions and speakers, as well as comments from their point of view. The next pages provide summarized overview of the participants answers on the survey that was delivered to them via Google Forms [link]. The results follow the questions in the same order as delivered in the survey itself. Over 88% of the attendees gave high scores - 4 and 5 - for the overall satisfaction of the conference. The conference met and exceeded the expectations of 85% of the participants. Over 32%  of the attendees said that the conference exceeded their expectations, while 53%  responded that it met their expectations.  

 10

Satisfaction with various organisational aspects

Average grade (1-5)

Registration process

4.53

Gift bags

4.30

Agenda and content

4.23

Overall organization of the event

4.28

Venue (Hotel Marriott)

4.56

Catering

3.70

Technical equipment

4.33

Expo area

4.10

Additional entertainment activities

4.26

 Almost 90% of the participants are very likely to recommend the conference to a friend or colleague.

Speakers and Panels Evaluation Evaluаtion of speakers who delivered keynote presentations or talks Speaker

Organisation and country

Topic

Average grade (1-5)

Gorast Cvetkovski

Host, Macedonia

Host

4.23

Triin Saag

Emota, Belgium

“Opportunities And Challenges Of Macedonian Webshops In The EU”

3.67

Bogdan Bochenek

Mastercard, Poland

“E-Commerce Payment Process: The Trends Behind Convenience Features Versus Risk Mitigation Factors Compromises”

3.93

Yu-kai Chou

Octalysis Group, USA

“How Gamified E-commerce Will Become The Next Battleground For Consumer Attention And Engagement“

4.48

Supratim Biswas

Clever Tap, UK

“How Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning Are Transforming Modern Marketing”

4.11

Michaela Plesnikova

Kiwi.com, Czech Republic

“How To Build A Great E-commerce Business That Sells Itself”

3.83

11

Evaluation of panels and moderators Panel topic

Panelists/Moderator Organisation and country

The Ones That Make The SUPPLY! “Show Me How It's Done” Part 1: The Challenges Of Pure MK E-players

Dragan Josifovski Ajlin Sheali Ljupcho Antovski Jovan Lazareski

Paket.mk, Macedonia Pazar3.mk, Macedonia KupiKniga.mk, Macedonia PlatiNaVrata.mk, Macedonia

4.30

Nina Angelovska

AETM & Grouper.mk

4.51

The Ones That Make The SUPPLY! “Show Me How It's Done” Part 1: The Future Of E-commerce As A Sales Channel For The Giants On The Market

Nikola Ljushev Mislav Galler Iskra Tikvarovska Kazandzievska Marija Tomevska Zorana Milidrag

Makedonski Telekom, Macedonia VIP, Macedonia EVN, Macedonia  Eurolink, Macedonia Sport Vision, Serbia

4.25

Nina Angelovska

AETM & Grouper.mk, Macedonia

4.43

Veljan Popovski Atila Selim Stefan Peposki  Igor Velichkovski  Biljana Donovska Gecheva

NLB Bank, Macedonia HalkBank, Macedonia Stopanska Banka Skopje, Macedonia National Bank of The Republic of Macedonia Casys...