The post What is digital asset management and how can it help you? appeared first on MarTech.
]]>Digital asset management (DAM) stores and organizes all of an organization’s digital assets — images, PDFs, photographs, audio, video and even virtual reality or other cutting-edge formats.
It is the “single source of truth,” where marketers can find every relevant version of media assets created for the brand. A DAM also adds metadata that can provide information on anything the marketer might want to know before using it. These include things like does the company have perpetual rights to use a photograph, whether the legal team has approved a video, and if an infographic or whitepaper was checked for brand design standard compliance.
Marketing agencies might leverage DAM technology to maintain consistency across in-house content and creatives developed by partners. B2B businesses might draw on the benefits of a centralized hub for sales collateral and event marketing materials. DAMs are being integrated with other technologies, especially content management systems and digital experience platforms, to unify marketing asset management and distribute digital content directly to the channels where they’re consumed.
First is consumer expectations.
Nearly three quarters of customers expect companies to understand their unique wants and needs — up from two-thirds in 2020, according to the fifth edition of Salesforce’s The State of the Connected Customer. The benefits of this personalization are clear. Companies using more granular personalization experience significant gains in conversions, revenue per visitor and average order value, according to an Incisiv Adobe study.
Second is the expanding number of channels and devices consumers are using.
DAMs make it easier to create and repurpose marketing content according to the different needs of the medium and format. They also support the entire content lifecycle – from upstream creative to downstream delivery. They support work-in-progress for content, speeding asset workflows, reviews and approvals, as well as connecting with tools like Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva and Microsoft Office.
This guide is for marketers who are looking to enhance their campaigns with digital assessment management technologies. Here’s what’s inside:
Digital asset management platforms have everything from legacy features, like file management, to emerging capabilities due to the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Here is a detailed look.
DAM systems differ in the extent of their workflow management capabilities. Some allow collaboration through @ tagging, while others have more full-fledged project management offerings. This can help marketing teams, along with outside creative resources, communicate about changes while an asset is in development or being updated.
Later, they can allow for approvals to be obtained from brand managers, execs and the legal team, while some systems also facilitate asset distribution. These capabilities may be built into the core platform or offered as an add-on or integration. Most DAMs are SaaS and can be accessed from browsers, but some have developed native apps.
One area of differentiation is the ability to manage a variety of file formats. Most support common popular video, image and audio formats. However, if your workflow requires the use of a specialized format you need to ensure any system you’re considering can handle it.
Some platforms allow an asset uploaded in one format to be downloaded or distributed in another — with conversions happening on the fly. Also, some have lightweight editing capabilities within the platform. To be clear, connections with common image editing software (Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, etc.) are typically more useful.
The content production supply chain can involve many departments, agencies, freelancers and more. The ability to provide flexible permissions, so the right people have access to the right assets –– and only the right assets –– is very valuable.
Within agencies, in particular, these capabilities can give clients/customers convenient self-service capabilities. It also lets large enterprises maintain a consistent brand message across geographies and verticals, while still letting marketers and salespeople can help themselves to the materials they need.
One of the most important benefits of a DAM is the ability to find assets after they’ve been created and filed away. Most providers now use artificial intelligence, either proprietary or through a partnership, for image and video recognition and tagging. Vendors are also exploring ways to use AI and machine learning to find insights and automate content transformations based on usage patterns.
Most marketers license content from individual creators or stock libraries. DAMs can keep track of the specific license terms governing each piece of content, ensuring they’re not used in the wrong market, an unapproved context or after license expiration.
Corporate brand guidelines, as well as timelines associated with particular marketing campaigns, can also typically be managed with DAM functionality.
Analytics capabilities allow marketers to trace the return on the investment made in the development of digital media. They can also determine which assets are used most often and in what ways, proividing insights for planning future content creation.
The majority of DAM providers partner with Amazon Web Services or Google to host their software and their clients’ assets. This means following those companies’ policies for geographical distribution, backups and security protocols. However, some players offer clients a variety of options for data hosting. This is useful for enterprises working with strict data governance regulations.
Since a DAM is meant to be the central “single source of truth” repository for all of a brand’s assets, it must integrate well with the rest of your martech stack. Vendors differ greatly in terms of the number and types of integrations they offer. Some are beginning to specialize in serving a specific sector with unique integration needs, such as online retailers using product information management systems.
Explore DAM solutions from vendors like Acquia, Widen, Cloudinary, MediaValet and more in the full MarTech Intelligence Report on digital asset management platforms.
Digital asset management systems can play a vital role in your marketing organization, unifying online and offline marketing channels and leading to more efficient marketing resource allocation.
The specific benefits of using a digital asset management platform include – but are not limited to – the following:
Read next: Does your organization need a digital asset management platform?
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]]>The post 20 questions to ask digital asset management platform vendors during the demo appeared first on MarTech.
]]>Given all of that promise, marketers are certainly evaluating these technologies and one crucial part of that process is the demo.
It’s important to set up demos as close to each other as possible to help make relevant comparisons. Also, make sure all potential internal users are on the demo call, and pay attention to the following:
Explore DAM solutions from vendors like Acquia, Widen, Cloudinary, MediaValet and more in the full MarTech Intelligence Report on digital asset management platforms.
The following 20 questions will help gauge if these platforms are right for your organizations.
File types
Integrations
Infrastructure and onboarding
Pricing and support
Strategy and product roadmap
What is it? Anyone who’s struggled to find a file on their computer or shared drive understands the pain of tracking down content. And when you consider the sheer amount of files you need to sort through when many versions are created to resonate with specific audiences, these tasks can feel overwhelming. Digital asset management platforms simplify these tasks by bringing all of your marketing content together.
Why are they important? Marketers are creating engaging content for more channels than ever before, which means the software used to manage these assets is gaining importance. What’s more, the communications between businesses and their customers are increasingly digital. Marketing content today is created in a wide variety of formats and distributed wherever consumers are digitally connected.
Why now? More than half of 1,000 consumers recently surveyed said they’re more likely to make a purchase if brand content is personalized, according to the Adobe Consumer Content Survey. Digital asset management platforms help marketers implement these personalization tactics. They also provide valuable insights into content interaction and the effectiveness of their assets.
Why we care. When those creating and using content aren’t near one another, having a central repository for assets is helpful. Finding the right content for your audience is made simpler when each version is organized in the same location. For these reasons and more, your marketing operations could benefit from adopting a digital asset management system.
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]]>The post Does your organization need a digital asset management platform? appeared first on MarTech.
]]>Here are some of the ways a DAM can aid an organization:
While these are all highly desirable capabilities, your organization may not need all of them. Determining if a DAM is right for your organization requires assessing your current asset management system. Here’s a list of questions to help you and your team get started:
If you use martech that features lightweight DAM features — like content management software, a digital experience platform or a web content management system — you may not need additional functionality, depending on the sophistication and geographic scope of your marketing operations.
Companies with complex brand standards and legal approvals processes — those that operate in a highly-regulated industry like insurance, for example — will want to ensure the DAM can enable and provide documentation of the necessary signoffs.
Prioritize the available digital asset management features based on your most pressing business needs.
C-suite buy-in and appropriate staffing are crucial to the effectiveness of any digital asset management platform. Increasingly, martech platforms such as digital asset management are being managed by the CMO – and not the CTO or CIO. In either case, without the proper skilled human resources in place, the platform can end up becoming an expensive reservoir of untapped data with unfulfilled potential to increase revenue and improve customer experiences with your brand.
Different platform vendors provide different levels of customer service — from self-serve to full-serve — and strategic consulting services. It’s important to have an idea of where you fall on the spectrum before interviewing potential partners. Training is essential. If your organization chooses not to hire internal staff, then consider whether you need to use an add-on or third-party consulting services to effectively use the platform.
Many enterprises work with different partners for email, ecommerce, social media, paid search and display advertising. Investigate which systems the digital asset management vendor integrates with – whether natively or via API – and find out if they offer seamless reporting and/or execution capabilities with external vendors. If a connection can be made only through an API, ensure you have the internal or external resources to develop the necessary integration.
You want to know the specific holes in your current reporting that will be filled by additional functionality and, more importantly, you want to be sure that that extra information will drive better decisions and ultimately more revenue for your business.
Enterprise digital asset management platforms’ pricing can range from a few hundred dollars a year to nearly half a million a year. Examine your feature requirements closely, as modular pricing models mean vendors vary in their inclusion of some features as standard or add-on.
You should set your business goals for the digital asset management platform in advance to be able to benchmark success later on. Without them, justifying the expense of the platform or subsequent marketing campaigns to C-suite executives will be difficult.
Explore DAM solutions from vendors like Acquia, Widen, Cloudinary, MediaValet and more in the full MarTech Intelligence Report on digital asset management platforms.
What is it? Anyone who’s struggled to find a file on their computer or shared drive understands the pain of tracking down content. And when you consider the sheer amount of files you need to sort through when many versions are created to resonate with specific audiences, these tasks can feel overwhelming. Digital asset management platforms simplify these tasks by bringing all of your marketing content together.
Why are they important? Marketers are creating engaging content for more channels than ever before, which means the software used to manage these assets is gaining importance. What’s more, the communications between businesses and their customers are increasingly digital. Marketing content today is created in a wide variety of formats and distributed wherever consumers are digitally connected.
Why now? More than half of 1,000 consumers recently surveyed said they’re more likely to make a purchase if brand content is personalized, according to the Adobe Consumer Content Survey. Digital asset management platforms help marketers implement these personalization tactics. They also provide valuable insights into content interaction and the effectiveness of their assets.
Why we care. When those creating and using content aren’t near one another, having a central repository for assets is helpful. Finding the right content for your audience is made simpler when each version is organized in the same location. For these reasons and more, your marketing operations could benefit from adopting a digital asset management system.
The post Does your organization need a digital asset management platform? appeared first on MarTech.
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