CHICAGO -- UBM Studios, the leader in world-class user engagement, today announced the Virtual Resource Center, an online location for customers, prospects and business partners to interact with an organization's marketing initiatives. The Virtual Resource Center is a low-cost virtual experience that can last for one day or can be perpetual and provides a wide reach while generating sales leads and tracking attendee activity. The first Virtual Resource Center was created for UBM's EE Times Group for IBM and offers important information for integrated systems engineering and embedded software development to help manufacturers and integrators build the systems and products that meet their business's objectives and their customers' needs.

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According to a survey by the Center for Exhibition Research and George P. Johnson, 40 percent of corporate brand marketers and 31 percent of exhibition management executives reported using virtual media; 71 percent of respondents used virtual media to accommodate geographically widespread workforces and customers.

"Our Virtual Resource Center is a virtual business solution where marketers can come to create low-cost, effective platforms to educate, engage and recruit customers," said Kate Spellman, SVP/Managing Director, UBM Studios. "Whether it's to launch a new product or service or provide customers with a virtual location to find the details of existing solutions, the Virtual Resource Center supports all marketing initiatives."

The Virtual Resource Center brands to a marketers theme and provides access to any content that can be downloaded on the internet, including web pages, white papers, podcasts, product demonstrations, video and webcasts. It also drives search traffic by publishing content visible to search engines. The Resource Center is a hosted service with registration and login, so it is secure. Moreover, no download is required. Visitors can access the web site fast and easily through any web browser.

Using a registration system, the Virtual Resource Center provides qualified lead generation, which translates into valuable, detailed sales leads including name and contact information, what content was viewed, how long the visitor stayed on the website, how many times the visitor returned and more. In addition, the Virtual Resource Center directs guests to specific content based on their area of interest.

The Virtual Resource Center can be staffed by a company's product and sales staff to engage with visitors at any time through chat, e-mail and business-card exchange. It also forwards Resource Center mail to the marketers everyday e-mail account. In addition, the Virtual Resource Center offers user-generated content in the form of group chat, blog and message forums, and notifies blog and message board owners when comments are made. The Virtual Resource Center activity can be integrated with an existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to provide a better profile of the audience and understand their areas of interest.

With UBM Studios' intuitive content management system, updating the content to the Virtual Resource Center is easy. This enables marketers to make the Virtual Resource Center engaging and fresh for visitors, which keeps customers coming back to view current content.

For additional information on UBM Studios virtual events, contact Kate Spellman, SVP, Managing Director, UBM Studios at 516 562 7383 or [email protected].

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United Business Media Ltd. (UBM) (London: UBM.L)