Broadline distributor Ingram Micro has launched an electronic marketing service, with the aim of providing lead-generation opportunities for resellers.
Known as the Digital Channel Solution, and launched in alliance with Netherlands-based internet company The Knowledge Factory, the system works by sitting behind a reseller's homepage, allowing end-users to access up-to-date product and promotional information from vendors with the click of a mouse.
Beth Brown, UK marketing manager at Ingram Micro, said reseller subscribers will receive weekly emails to send to their customers, personalised to reflect their brand and designed to link back to their web site.
The service is free to the first 100 resellers; VARs joining after that will pay a "nominal" annual fee. About 25 vendors have joined the scheme so far.
Brown said: "Digital Channel has been running in Holland for about a year. The beauty is that it provides resellers, particularly the smaller players in the SME space, with much-needed marketing resources, and links them more closely to vendors.
"The technology has been designed to allow partners to see exactly what products their customers are showing an interest in over the web, thus providing potential new business leads."
Vicky Hope, sales and marketing manager at reseller Logic Business, said: "This opens up new product lines and allows for new business opportunities in a simple way.
"It is great that a distributor is thinking about resellers and has created something that can actually benefit the channel."
Neil Pearson, sales and marketing manager at IT Dealer, which provides an online sourcing tool exclusively for resellers, said: "Anything that helps resellers provide vendor promotional information to customers is a useful tool, but time will tell if it's going to be of major use to the channel."
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