Digital Cream Singapore is a unique moderated roundtable forum for the most senior client-side digital and brand marketers to discuss and explore the latest best practice on emarketing procurement, business cases, investment, ROI and supplier selection. Attendees will also discuss their future online strategies and compare these with like-minded peers.

More details about Digital Cream can be found here:　http://econsultancy.com/sg/events/digital-cream-singapore-2012

The key to the event for senior buyers is to learn about gaining more budget and CFO commitment in digital marketing, better selection and short-listing of partners as well as suppliers and maximizing ROI longer term.  There are 11 roundtable topics and each delegate chooses three table topics of their choice, each session lasting about an hour and fifteen minutes. Each roundtable is independently moderated and focuses on a particular topic with the roundtable attendees proposing specific questions or challenges they wish to discuss on that topic in the time available. The specific agenda for each topic roundtable will depend on the input of the delegates.

Digital Cream has been devised by the analysts and editors at Econsultancy in consultation with the most senior digital buyers in the world and runs in London, Dubai, New York, Chicago, Shanghai, San Jose and now Singapore.

Each Digital Cream Singapore attendee will receive three months free trial to Econsultancy Silver membership, which provides unrestricted access to 400+ best practice guides, stats compendiums and surveys.

Attendees pick three tables from the following topics:

1. eCommerce & Onsite Conversion Rate Optimisation

2. Online Advertising: Strategy & Maximizing Returns

3. Email Marketing

4. Cross Channel Online Marketing

5. Search Engine Marketing Optimization & Data Analytics

6. Social Media Optimization– Managing, Marketing & Measuring

7. Strategic Content Development, Curation & Marketing

8. Customer Experience Management

9. Mobile Commerce, Marketing and Apps

Program

09:00 – 09:30 Registration and coffee

09:30 – 09:45 Welcome and introduction

09:45 – 10:15 1st Keynote

10:15 – 11:30 1st Roundtable session

11:30 – 12:00 Morning break

12:00 – 13:15 2nd Roundtable session

13:15 – 14:15 Lunch

14.15 – 14.45 2nd Keynote

14:45 – 16:00 3rd Roundtable session

16:00 – 16:30 Moderators’ Panel Round up and closing remarks

16:30 – 18:00 Reception & networking

More details about Digital Cream can be found here:　http://econsultancy.com/sg/events/digital-cream-singapore-2012

E-commerce in Singapore is booming. Emall.sg is testimony to the popularity of e-businesses in Singapore. It lists over 4,000 active local businesses including blog shops, coupon deal sites, grocery stores and education portals.

Livejournal alone reports it has 1.2 million Singaporean users and over 50,000 blogshops, generating more than US$72 million worth of transactions in Singapore in 2011. Livejournal blogshops transacted 6% of Singapore’s forecasted e-commerce volume of US$1.2 billion in 2011.

Despite the advantages of e-businesses above bricks-and-mortar retail, running an e-business is no cheap affair.

A survey conducted in Singapore in 2010 highlighted some significant challenges facing e-business owners in Singapore. Issues included under-capitalisation, high running costs and skills gaps.

To ensure an e-business survives past year one, there are three kinds of expenses e-business owners should consider when preparing a business plan.

Marketing spend

60% of e-businesses spend less than $5,000 per annum in online advertising. Only 10% spend between 10,000 and 50,000 per annum. A spend of $5,000 per annum works out to $415 per month, making it difficult to measure if this level of ad spend has any effect on sales.

Source: 2009-10 e-commerce survey initiated
by the E-Commerce Alliance of Singapore.

Given the depth of products e-businesses sell, and the dilution of online spend between customer acquisition and retention, $415 per month is a drop in the ocean.

An aggressive market entry would see marketing spend S$4,000 per month in online marketing, slowly reducing over time as the firm optimises online spend, and drops marketing channels which yield poor return on investment.

A typical spend pattern would see marketing dollars allocated to several online marketing channels, including mobile advertising (admob), social media ads (facebook ads), search engine marketing (adwords) and email marketing (mail chimp).

Tech spend

E-business owners under-estimate future capital expenditure. Building the initial website and brand is a one part of the investment. After receiving customer feedback, more dollars are needed to be spent if the website is to build a critical mass of users.

If entrepreneurs have not planned for this cash spend, they will be hemmed in. Unable to evolve their product, their competition will gain an advantage. They won’t have enough cash to introduce new types of technology not planned for at initial build.

The technology bill alone to keep up with user feedback could be as high as S$30,000 per annum in year one. This spend is enough to cover the front-end of the site. Additional spend may also be necessary to develop the back-end business functions, including inventory control, billing, sales analytics and hosting.

Talent spend

The report highlighted e-business owners have technical and marketing knowledge gaps that hindered the growth of their business. An online business will need up to three fulltime professionals. These specialists include a technician to continue improving the website, an online / social media marketer to get reach and a finance person to monitor spend and revenue.

This kind of talent can provide strategic direction. A technician can advise an owner whether to build on Ruby, or use an off-the-shelf solution like Magento. Or help the firm save money by outsourcing the webserver to cloud providers like Amazon.

A proficient online marketer could advise the owner on making the most of Facebook commerce.

The message from the research is clear. New market entrants into the e-commerce space will need more capital to steal market share from existing players, and offer new types of products and services to differentiate the brand.

About Futurebooks
Futurebooks is Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s most progressive bookkeeping company. Futurebooks offer affordable incorporation, bookkeeping, business planning and brokering, to entrepreneurs with big ambitions.

Whether your goal is to be acquired or to be more profitable this quarter, Futurebooks provide planning to keep your business on track and bookkeeping services that streamline the journey.

Using cloud computing solutions like Intuit’s QuickBooks Online, Xero, SaaSu, DropBox, Workflowmax, Vend, salesforce.com and Google Enterprise, Futurebooks are able to offer clients productivity improvements and reductions in the cost of accounting.

Visit our website and chat to us live or follow us on Twitter.

About the author
Anthony is the founder of Futurebooks Pte Ltd. Anthony is obsessed with helping start-up companies incorporate, conduct industry analysis and develop brand positioning. He has ten years experience in media and marketing, and was founder of Firestarter, a digital marketing agency.
Firestarter was acquired by Novus Media in 2010.

Recently there are a lot of inquiries about Fulfillment/Logistics providers in Singapore who can service E-Commerce portals to process orders and ship to international locations.

Here is an initial list of such providers I know of. If you know of any other providers, leave a comment.

Singpost

UPS

DHL

WhiteBox

…..

Group Buying Sites/Daily Deal Sites are obviously the coin of the realm in today’s e-commerce business. Singapore is no exception – there are a bunch of them in market.

Here is a list that I have compiled for your reference:

SingPost is Singapore’s designated Public Postal Licensee (PPL), providing efficient and high quality domestic and international postal services. It is also the leading logistics provider in the domestic market and own one of the largest retail distribution networks.

SingPost has been investing to build on the good growth in its Logistics unit, with a particular eye on e-commerce logistics, with a larger stake in the Malaysian express specialist GD Express Carrier Berhad, as well as Chinese firm Shenzhen 4PX Express Co. Last month, the company also announced pans to acquire a 30% stake in Vietnamese logistics firm Indo Trans Logistics Corporation.

Aiming to help accelerate the boom in e-commerce, SingPost bought a 95% stake of internet retailer Clout Shoppe in February, which it aims to grow throughout the region.

And, SingPost has been expanding its electronic postal business in the region by buying up the remaining 30% stake in hybrid mail business DataPost, and by taking a 20.12% stake in Malaysian document processing business Efficient E-Solutions Berhad.

Dr Wolfgang Baier, chief executive of SingPost’s international division, said diversifying and building up the company’s regional presence would help counter the economic challenges to the group and provide a more balanced revenue and earnings profile.

He said: “The regional investments strengthen our network and enable us to gain entry into developing markets with growth potential such as China, IndoChina and India.

“We are working on leveraging these regional assets as well as our existing regional subsidiary Quantium Solutions to further harness growth opportunities, making the necessary investments in people, infrastructure, technology and processes.”

Dr Baier said SingPost would continue to explore opportunities for further acquisitions in the Asia-Pacific to create long-term value for the company and its shareholders.