Hi, @Pier, thak you for very strong proposal. Make Serbia Crystal Land)
I have several ideas and questions about your proposal:
In case of lean methodology and adoption logic. First part of this partnership, can be the simplest way Test of choosing and using crystals by your users. Just register in free ton, download surf, and send your address, and you can get some crystals or any other cost effective model for you and for Community. We can see conversion in free ton users, or declaration submission, or activities in Community. Than you can make some corrections in your program.
Do you have in your practice promotions like this for your client? It’s interesting to know how your client like some digital staff to use instead of real goods discounts?
Also interesting to see your service auditory analytucs in quantity and demographics for both services.
HI @itakura1, Sorry it took a bit of time to answer.
It took us almost a year to get approvals from the Ministry of finance to see our coupons (vouchers) as a payment method. It got approved only because it is in RSD. Currently Law is very strict about it and all payments should be done only in Serbian Dinars. Everything else is unfortunately forbidden. That is why we are so caution here. We hope to see some new legislation next year.
But we did it once, so you never know. We will keep everybody updated.
HI @APRrush, thank you for your questions.
We will try to answer them one by one.
1. Question
Very good question.
We are actually one of the biggest resellers of online education services and online courses in Serbia. You can see more here
To be honest we never looked that way more detailed, but it is a very interesting idea.
Digital goods can have bigger discounts as owners do not have additional costs for new customers.
Do you have something in mind?
Please send us DM to explore those possibilities in detail.
And thank you so much for your idea. It is actually very good.
2. Question
As We mentioned earlier,
We may only say that is ± similar to all Daily deal (Coupon) websites in the region.
Demographics:
Male / female - approx. 30%/70%
Age
20-30: approx. - 15%
30-40: approx. - 40%
40-50: approx. - 30%
50+ : approx. - 15%
We are definitely interested in getting a younger population and men.
This partnership is one of our ideas on that matter.
We think that this partnership will bring us some male millennials as they are interested in this kind of thing.
Also we would like to make an environment for them where they should feel as a member of a closed and smart community, simply by using our coupons for their daily needs.
Thank you for your questions, they are super.
And may the force be with us.
And about lean testing your idea, without deep integration, just to test behavior of your users, and more realistic forecast about conversion in users of Free-Ton?
My forecast is that not more than 10% of your clients, can be users of Free Ton. It’s 50000 of users, and cost of one FreeTon user will be ~40 crystals. It’s not bad, but good to know real users behavior.
Also questions on trends.google.com tells me that grupovina and popusti brands lost their popularity (like in Russia too). Several screens:
Hi @APRrush, of course not. We are preparing answers for all questions of course.
Just need some time to solve usual daily operational things, and then we will prepare detailed answers as we usually do.
BTW your analysis is good. Thank you for that. It is a confirmation that we are on the right track.
It is exactly how we will started our investigation and preparation of 2020-2030 strategy.
@APRrush thanks for your comments. It was a loong day, so sorry if there are some typos.
As usual we will try to answer one by one:
1. Question/Concern.
On our end we know the approximate behaviour of our existing user that is why we prepared a loyalty program in the first place :).
Quick reply is:
Most of them will use it.
Detailed:
We did a poll research before we started development of a new popusti website and 68% of users/buyers, who filled out a questionnaire for 5% discount code for the next purchase said that they would love to have a Grupovina loyalty card.
We know that that may not be a good way to get detailed information but what we already know is:
They use our great daily deals in order to get discounts ;).
When we will give them loyalty bonus (=additional discount) they will use it, because when we give additional discount as a marketing campaign our sales rises up to 35% during that period.
When we will make segmentation and give additional bonuses to some segment, they will try to reach it. Simple gamification
2. Question/Concern.
Without integration we can send emails with a link to an article on our blog with information about Free Ton and put banners on a website, but we see some major issues with that approach:
What will be the use case for those users that we all need to convert if there is no integration?
How to track conversions ?
Sorry but that is not how we will work. It will go like this:
We will prepare ourself before we go live so we can track, and give something to our (Both Gru/Po and free Ton) users. Without tracking everything else it will be just simply be a waste of time and resources.
We will prepare and plan campaigns, where we will promote Co-Branded loyalty programs via real use cases for existing and new potential users.
Result:
If both, and main word here Both Grupovina/Popusti and Free Ton Community are happy, we will move to the next stage together and continue Marketing Campaign according to the stage 2a.
We will not go to the next stage until both partners are satisfied with results, because for Ton it will be a waste of Crystals and for Grupovina/Popusti it will be misleading of existing and new users, so our brands will suffer. Please note that Brands are one of our main assets.
Next stage (Stage 2a / Stage 2b)
If Everything goes as planned and everybody (Free Ton, Gru/Po, Users) are satisfied we will prepare a new partnership proposal (Stage 3) for the period 2020-2030 where we will require additional up to 80 mln. Crystals for other countries expansion (also in stages and country based of course), so we don’t get in case that we are left without crystals and we need to buy them, but we bring new users to Free Ton.
In addition please keep in mind that according to our proposal:
Some of Crystals will be distributed to charity funds, with full and transparent reports.
Some of Crystals will eventually be distributed to the existing and loyal customers as they reach a new bonus level.
Some Crystals will be used during preparation.
In any case, eventually we want to become the biggest Ambassador of Free Ton in South-East Europe.
And of course to earn money out of that, by selling our coupons.
Sorry if our answer to this question was large but we hope that now you understand us and our proposal better.
3. Question/Concern.
You are absolutely right. World wide hype over coupons was in early 2010 and up to 2015.
Before we get into details, it is worth noticing that similar thing happens with many areas and there are similar situations you can see bellow:
So this is a global trend do to mobile first, apps, voice, Marketing.
In our situation, among the “Hype passed thing” there are couple of thing that worth mentioning:
1. Brand awareness.
When people get familiar with the brand they search less for it, because they already have it in their browsers, apps. In our case a bigger part of our users comes directly to the offer single page from our email marketing and SMM.
2. Synergy
On the graphs that you showed we can see Popusti and Grupovina partially.
If you compare them Popusti were searched for a longer period of time due to their activities. That is what we propose to do now but together. We understand that it wont be hype as it was, but Serbia is not that big market.
3. SEO
Popusti in serbian means sales so people tend to search just popusti rather than popusti.rs. That is why you can see peaks in similar time we started our campaigns.
4. Redirection
During platform development - popusti.rs had a redirection to grupovina.rs. As you know redirection is worst for SEO, but it gave some good stand for grupovina for that period. Now it is time to move on.
Vision
But our vision how we hope that this graph will look like is actually similar to Yandex (that is actually because of voice search) :
This might be good partnership but way too niche and localized market compared to high cost of 2,4M. Distribution seems to have good balance percentually, but 2,4 Million has 2 million too much.
Problem with these kind of partnerships is that they are getting funding while we’ll get an audience, and when the funding is too much for market to handle. That audience will turn against us when the price goes down.
I initially thought this collaboration would build a TON economy in Serbia (many services etc. accepting TONs), which would be an interesting case study. It sounds like this is not possible due to legal restrictions. Therefore, this is more of a co-promotion opportunity.
That is what we can propose right now. We will see together how everything will develop. We will try to not only promote Crystals, but also to advocate it. We start with what can do, and then we move together and try new approaches.
But we need to start with something.
There quite a lot of comments from Grupovina team. I’m impressed! The team answered well on all questions. I think it should pass on the voting. Good partnership!
I agree with speakers above that it is a great cooperation offer and developing a loyalty program is an excellent use case for Free TON. At the same time I would like to highlight several recommendations from the guide which is under discussion in community right now. 1. Split integration cost 50/50 upfront/ upon result. 2. Direct advertising is not “a preferred expense” for Free TON. It is much better to have it a separate offer and discuss it within PR Subgovernance 3. Charity is an important social impact activity, but regular it is lacks spending transparency. There are few other Free TON partner projects, which aim to build a transparent donation platform. Probably it is worth to cooperate.
Dear @p.prigolovko
1. We are absolutely fine with dividing of upfront, in order to show that we see this as a partnership also.
We propose that we have initial 160k (50% integration, and initial testing )
2. After integration we will ask for additional 270k (50% integration and testing and upfront for loyalty and other mechnics testing).
3. After we are all satisfied with results, we go to stage 2a.
4. Everything else will go according to the KPI described in our proposal. It means that you will see transparency of our charity.
That way everyone will be satisfied with this partnership.
We hope you see this as a good partnership possibility, as we do.
Also Crypto currency is well known in Serbia. A lot of people were mining bitcoin in a period, when it was profitable.
Currently there is a legal framework for crypto.
2. About Us
Who we are
Grupovina and Popusti are 2 out of top 5 Daily deals (coupons) websites in Serbia, with 500 000 users (370k of them in Belgrade) and 6m+ emails sent monthly.
Basically we are Serbian version of worldwide known Daily Deala websites
We are an e-commerce platform and online partner for 1000+ offline small, medium and large businesses in Serbia and for more than 5000+ since start.
Today Grupovina is a one stop shop for all sales in Serbia with 4000+ offline deals(we call them offers) with partners providing goods and services with discount.
Our other website Popusti.rs is in public beta today.
IMPORTANT: As a Serbian website we are fully GDPR compliant.
Users are paying on our websites for offers and then we issue a coupon with QR code which is presented to the partner. Partner is providing goods or service free of charge to the client and then we pay redeem payments to the partners.
It is very important to say that our gross margin is 0-20% from every offer. From this margin we pay our OPEX, CAPEX and other expenses. That is why we are always keen to be cost effective.
Grupovina is online since 2010.
Up to 2015 we were working in eCommerce and Marketing in Balkans and beyond,
We acquired Grupovina in 2016 with 180k users and since then we managed to get additional 300k users.
Initially our main focus were services (beauty salons, private clinics, education).
Starting from 2017 we acquired our competitors and in the end 2018 we managed an M&A deal with previous owners of popusti.rs which was the top1 daily deal website in Serbia.
During 2019- 2020 we finished re-design of popusti.rs website and whole platform introducing many new features such us:
Travel hot deals
Goods on sales
Free coupons
PDF versions of printed catalogs
Information about sales for all major brands in Serbia.
3. Partnership vision
The uniqueness of our proposal is that we enable a real world use cases and for Free Ton combined with offline services and products.
We thinks that popusti.rs is re-defining (as Apple would say :)) serbian sales as a one stop shop for all sales in the country, and it will be a WIN/WIN situation for both Free TON Community and us as well.
Benefits for FreeTON community:
Real world use case for TON Crystal: both offline and online
Utility property for a token
Brand awareness in a country-wide scale (even several regions scale)
Token market turnover creation (demand/supply)
New users, transactions, actions
We see potential partnership in 3 main areas.
1. Loyalty club
In our new platform we are also introducing Loyalty club for our user. Having large network of partners we were willing to provide additional bonuses to our clients in order to engage their activities.
Proposal
Our plan for this quarter is to re-define our bonus and loyalty program, by giving our clients opportunity to “buy” goods/services with their loyalty Crystals.
We offer FreeTON community to convert our loyalty program Grupoints to Crystals which are supposed to be backed with TON Crystals.
This particular measure creates a utility for a token, and demand/supply as well.
Disclaimer: In current situation we see that users will be able to reduce up to a 100% of the value by loyalty bonuses, but that situation may be changed due to legislation or user behavior in order not to jeopardise our business.
User case
1. User adds offers to a basket
In an example provided user added following offer:
Medical test for Helicobacter Pylori from blood
COVID-19 Multy usage facial mask
2 winter tyres replacement Total price (for all three offers) is 1660 RSD.
2. On the step 3 user needs to pick a payment method.
3. After he picks the payment method, the user can lower prices with Loyalty bonuses which he has on his internal account.
5. With those coupons I go to partner give them QR code to scan or give printed coupon
6. Get product/Service
7. Grupovina pays a partner twice a month.
Benefits for Free TON Community
Loyalty bonus conversion will give a huge benefit to the spread of TON into the real economy sector in Europe.
Our users will be able to have a discount on services/products from 1000+ partners in Serbia.
Our biggest partners are:
Euromedic (Biggest chain of private clinics)
All other private clinic chains
Iqos (Philipp Morris)
Orion Telekom
National Theater
Avon
Maxi (biggest food chain in Serbia)
And many others
3. By using our system of voucher payment in Serbia users will be able to actually make purchases using their crystals, and Free ton will be one of rarest currencies which has real use cases by covering realy daily needs of already our (both Free Ton Community and Grupovina) users.
As a part of our loyalty program we reward Crystals to OUR users, but only for their actions. Much like a gamification and leveling up reward system.
2. Co-Branded Marketing
Since 2010 we have many marketing activities for management of KupiMe and for our current brand Grupovina in both digital, outdoor and retail marketing.
As a digital marketing agency we are focused on conversions and that is why we mainly perform digital marketing activities.
1. Google ads
We are one of biggest google ads advertisers in Serbia with more than 70 campaigns and 23000 keywords simultaneously run.
We promote via Text, Images and video ads.
Our digital marketing strategy is to promote via long tail keywords by focusing on intent and purchase part of the marketing funnel, that is why, we promote mainly offers with goods/services where we have higher margin, and our categories/subcategories. This approach gives us higher conversion rate and more loyal customers.
In addition we promote special events which we plan and perform on occasions (Black friday, Halloween, Day of student, first day of spring etc.). During special events we give additional discounts to our users (up to 10% on our prices with discount from partner).
Grupovina facebook group has more than 160 000 members (155 000 following) and is among the biggest in Serbia.
Our weekly reach is 11-20k users without paid promotion, based on the attractiveness of our offers.
During our activities we found that paid promotion on facebook doesn’t have a good conversion rate so we mainly promote brand awareness and interest segments.
In a perfect world only by saying that we are a part of a FreeTON community would make the most innovative platform in Serbia and Balkans, and of the most innovative in SEE region and give us brand advantage.
But, we live in a real world where sometimes legislation occurs. That’s why we consider strategy where we will position TON Crystal as a part of our loyalty program.
We propose to put sign “backed up by TON Community” and/or “backed up by Crystals” on our all of our marketing activities by using not only using our digital asses (E-mail, Push notifications, Brands, Google ads, Facebook/Instagram) but also to go together to a new level
In addition to that we propose that we enlarge our Co-branding campaign to:
4. Influencers
Our plan is to make a marketing deal with influencers where they will initially promote:
Grupovina/Popusti loyalty system which is backed up by Crystals.
Promote Free Ton itself by brand mentions without saying that they can be used on Grupovina/Popusti websites
5. Outdoor Marketing
1. Billboards in Major Cities
Our plan is to use billboards all over major cities as a major outdoor activity for marketing purposes
2. Intercity Busses
We plan to use busses as a second main outdoor activity
During our expansion to other countries we will seek for the most cheap but effective ways for our joint co-Branding campaigns in each particular country.
User case
Bellow you can see examples how we see our co-branding campaign.
1. Google ads
Desktop
Mobile 2. Facebook marketing
The proposed marketing campaign is aimed to promote our new loyalty program with TON Crystal in the centre of it. Co-branded campaign is synergical for both brands: TON Crystal + Grupovina/Popusti. The creative concept of this campaign is also based around TON Crystal.
In brief, benefits are:
Shared brand awareness
Additional audience warm-up and education
Case approbation for the next potential partners enabling (with similar businesses).
3. Charity
Being devastated by war and NATO Bombing Serbia is not among the richest countries.
As a part of our corporate responsibility we don’t see it possible to just work in this beautiful country without helping people among us.
That is why in public beta we introduced a charity program to our users.
Each offer has an amount of Serbian dinars which we transfer to charity. All money donated to charity will be taken out of our revenue margin.
But we think that today just saying that we are giving to charity or transfer money is not enough. We believe in the power of choice.
That is why we give our users the opportunity to pick which charity fund they want to donate money from their purchases.
Once a month we will transfer money and provide proof of transfer on our website.
All funds are hand picked and we stand for our reputation. Please bare in mind that we exist since 2010 and our reputation is one of our main assets
Proposal
For each RSD given by us there would be 1 RSD backed by TON Crystals
For that we will dedicate one person to be responsible for detailed work with charities and we will make not just payments and reports but also we will work more closely with funds.
User Case
1. User adds offers to a basket
In an example provided user added following offer:
Medical test for Helicobacter Pylori from blood
COVID-19 Multy usage facial mask
2 winter tyres replacement Total price (for all three offers) is 1660 RSD. Charity donation for this purchases is 25 RSD
That means that by the end of the month this 25 RSD with other money will go as one payment to them.
3. At the end of month Grupovina transfers money to Zvoncica fondation.
4. User will get email with notification that we transferred funds to zvoncica organisation saying that his amount was doubled by “backed up by Free TON Comunity.
Benefits for FreeTON community:
Free TON community will actually save lives, give shelter, help people and make the world just a little bit better place.
4. Roadmap
As a part of our 2020-2030 strategy we divide propose do divide our partnership into several stages:
Stage 1 - Integration and testing [2020]
Stage 2 - Marketing in Serbia [2021]
Important: Currently this proposal is caped by Serbian Market. Grupovina strategy 2020-2030 is based on expansion to other markets.
If everything goes as planned in Serbia we will come back with toFree Ton community in order to request tokens for new markets, but also only based on our capabilities and legislation in those countries.
Stage 1 - Integration (3 months)
Integration of TON Crystals in Grupovina ecosystem as a bonus points
Currently we do not store any points and do not have any internal bonus accounts. That needs to be developed.
Development of a loyalty ecosystem for both websites.
Development of exchange mechanism
Determination of KPIs for clients and development of clients loyalty system segmentation based on KPIs
Development of different pricing mechanism for different users
Integration of TON and loyalty system
Testing and Preparation
Testing of IT infrastructure
Marketing plan development including legal restrictions
Legal questions and legal risk mitigation
Financial planning and mitigation of financial risks
Introductions of bonuses with our team and client support
Internal process development
Public beta
Tests with users on UI and UIX
Marketing Plan testing.
Popusti.rs GO LIVE / Grupovina v.4.0 GO LIVE
Stage 2 - Operations Start and Marketing (12 months)
Initial on site Marketing - delicate explanation to new and existing users - 3 months
Email Marketing
Banners on Websites
Bonus Promotion campaign - 3 months
Digital Marketing
Outdoor Marketing
Special Promotions - 6 months
Special Campaign regarding Bonuses- 3 months
Info: During summer time we reduce digital marketing and will stop outdoor marketing campaigns since conversion and sales drops
5. Token request and KPIs
Stage 1 - Integration, testing and preparation
Action
Total
Upfront
Integration
200k
100k
Testing
60k
60k
Initial token request - 160k Crystals
2. Stage 2 Serbia
Action
Total
Up front
KPI 1 after upfront
Next Release (½ of the rest)
KPI 2
Final Release (½ of the rest)
KPI 3
Loyalty
600k
25k
5 000 opened wallets
287.5k
50 000 opened wallets
287.5k
50 000 opened wallets
Purchase Bonus
500k
35k
3 000 transaction with Crystals as our purchase bonus
232.5k
30 000 transaction with Crystals as our purchase bonus
232.5k
30 000 transaction with Crystals as our purchase bonus
Charity
200k
20k
20k crystals. Spend on charity. Screenshots of transactions
90k
90k crystals. Spend on charity. Screenshots of transactions
90k
90k crystals. Spend on charity. Screenshots of transactions
Digital Marketing
240k
40k
40k Crystals spent on digital marketing with conversion stats
100k
Number of open wallets based on previous conversion stats
100k
Number of open wallets based on previous conversion stats
Outdoor Marketing
240k
30k
10 Billboards branded with “Backed by” signs 2 Buses branded with “Backed by” signs
105k
35 Billboards branded with “Backed by” signs 8 Buses branded with “Backed by” signs
105k
35 Billboards branded with “Backed by” signs 8 Buses branded with “Backed by” signs
Influencers
200k
20k
4 videos of influencers speaking either about free Ton, either about Grupovina/popusti with loyalty bonus backed up by Free Ton
90k
18 videos of influencers speaking either about free Ton, either about Grupovina/popusti with loyalty bonus backed up by Free Ton
90k
18 videos of influencers speaking either about free Ton, either about Grupovina/popusti with loyalty bonus backed up by Free Ton
Total
1.98 m
170k
Based on KPIs
900k
Based on KPIs
750k
Based on KPIs
Total stage 2 - 1.98 mln tokens
Upfront - 270k (including other 50% from integration)
After everyone are satisfied with integration and initial testing, We will jointly move to stage 2a
1st token release - 905k
And afterwards to stage 2b
2nd token release - 905k
During stages 1 and 2 we will develop an effective marketing strategy which is the last piece of puzzle for as we hope joint co-branded expansion to other Countries.
Disclaimer: Even if our KPIs may look different from other proposals, keep in mind that we work in the market with real goods and services.
We prepared this proposal based on:
Intention to take role in Free Ton community development,
vision of FreeTON potential
believe in the power of blockchain.
If you see potential as we do and our proposal gets approved, we kindly ask you to send tokens to the following address: 0:c0f2cb8e0dc47ae71ee047a59e8fdfaa1c7f5acbd3374c610b8ffc9a028bba23
We really hope that now our offer is more clear to everybody
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask them any time.
Thank you for your time reading our proposal.
Yours faitfully,
Grupovina and Popusti
Serbian member of Free Ton Community and your best friend for cheaper and better life.
Crystals” on our all of our marketing activities by using not only using our digital asses (E-mail, Push notifications, Brands, Google ads, Facebook/Instagram) but also to go together to a new level
