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Seven participants in the just held two-day e-Commerce Summit 2010 won gift certificates from BUYanihan.com in a raffle draw held on the last day of the summit.

They were:

· Reggie Bundang of regaloservice.com (a gift service portal)

· Alvin Gale Tan of SVI Software Services (e-services outsourcing provider)

·  Micci Lopez of cashsense (facilitator of cash-based transactions online and offline)

·  Fritzie Ann Revilla of 701 Search Inc. (online classified ads service)

·  Bernardo Mitra (chairman of many companies, among them ChilLine Attitude Corporation which develops destinations that cater to a high-end client base)

· Alexandra Lopez of Ayannah (provider of solutions that enable secure transactions over online and mobile communication networks)

· Mel Co of Global Competitiveness (business and training consultancy)

Each won P300 worth of GCs of Sodexo, Krispy Kreme and Red Mango that BUYanihan.com raffled off after the announcement of the category winners in the 4th DigitalFilipino SPI top 100 Web Awards.

Some of them are members of the DigitalFilipino.com Club founded in 2003 by Janette Toral who is acknowledged as the ‘Mother of  the e-Commerce Law (RA8792)’.  The Club is composed of more than 100 members who meet regularly to share their experiences on e-commerce, social media, SEO marketing, blogging and e-lancing (freelancing over the Internet).

BUYanihan.com founder Eddie Lee was a speaker on the first day where he discussed the growth potential in the Philippines of group buying websites by harnessing the Filipinos’  collective bargaining power and their innate social networking skills.

By 2012, Eddie foresees this market to grow to P9 billion with about 20 strong players each featuring 3,000 discount deals a year.

For a group buying site to successfully promote and sell 3,000 deals, he said the company needs to have 300 staff to handle 1-million transactions a year and have the infrastructure to send out one (1) billion emails to its customers (database) who have a spending power of P300 per month.

Launched in August 2 this year, BUYanihan.com is the Philippines’ first group buying site. Since then, the site has featured 20 deals on food and drinks, beauty and skin care, themed parks, travel, hotel, kiddies fun and fun run.

Two PhotoVote winners. Karl Ian and Kay Anne Esureña, brother and sister, both gaga about marketing, social networking and the Internet.

They are your typical netgeners: young (Karl is 24, Kay’s 22), wired to the Internet all the time, selling and buying online, checking quality of goods and comparing prices on the web, growing their social network. Special emphasis on the last two words. Karl and Kay Anne  could teach Zuckerberg the Pinoy way of growing one’s social network in a month’s time.

Karl’s what you’d call an accidental winner. He was at the right place at the right time (Go Negosyo Youth Entrepreneurship Summit 2010) but he was reluctant to take part in the festive-like promos, until he was ‘kinda-forced’ to line up at the BUYanihan.com photo booth near the stage. But this is getting ahead of the story.

“I wanted to learn about new business trends which is why I attended Go Negosyo where admission was free,” said Karl. He and his sister found their way to the photo booth teeming with students who wanted their pictures taken so they can join the just-launched PhotoVote contest.

That was the first time the siblings learned about BUYanihan.com, so they circled the exhibit booth out of curiosity. He can’t remember how many minutes they clocked in there while looking at the discount deals that offered year-long ticket passes to six zoos until 2011, food and drink, kart racing, cinema snacks. (They didn’t buy.)

Just as they were leaving for the meeting rooms to listen to the lectures, a staff from BUYanihan.com chatted them up while leading them to the photo booth queue. About five banner stands were strewn around the exhibit booth announcing an Apple iPad prize for the PhotoVote winner. That may have prompted Karl and Kay to go for it.

Fast forward. They won the contest with 735 Likes. We asked him if he really has these many friends and relatives and if he created dummy accounts to vote for his photo.

Yes and no.

Dummy accounts not his style, he replied politely. All he and Kay did, he added with a shy smile, was tag their photos, post messages on their FB walls, appeal for help from his relatives here, in Australia, in the US, and Barangay Bahay Toro in Proj.8, Quezon City where he lives. (Ladies, he’s in a relationship.)

Surely he must have done more than that, we retorted and egged him to talk some more.

This marketing whiz actively supported the October 25 barangay elections and used the occasion to bundle additional` ‘Like’ votes.  Moreover, his girlfriend’s aunt runs an Internet café in the neighborhood. Karl persuaded the aunt to give customers extra five (5) minutes of free Internet connection in return for liking their photo entry.

Karl is looking for a new job, having just resigned from a call center where he provided technical support to 5-star hotels around the world. In the meantime, he buys and sells cell phones and other gadgets over the Internet.  Sister Kaye is in her 4th year in marketing management at the University of the East.

We throw him our last two questions. What do you like about BUYanihan? And what have you bought so far?

We’re quoting him verbatim. “Okay ang advertising and marketing strategies ninyo. I liked how you used the Facebook PhotoVote contest to increase brand awareness and your sales.”

He and Kaye were going to buy the Kamasutra cake (deal) before heading home after their BUYanihan interview and photocall.

(As of this writing, there are 13,615 people on Facebook who like the BUYanihan page. This number keeps growing everyday. So folks, keep liking us. It’s not shameful to ask!)