Is it hard for your marketing team to stay on track with your digital assets? Are several stakeholders having some trouble collaborating on a campaign asset? Digital asset management solutions may be the answer your team has been looking for. It helps to locate, store, organize, retrieve, and disseminate your complete digital content repositories from a single authoritative source.

The importance of high-quality material cannot be denied. From photographs and graphics to insightful blog and social media content, great content helps organizations engage with consumers, increase brand recognition, and ultimately boost revenue. Contemporary digital asset management (DAM) systems enable marketers to maximize the use of digital content assets while eliminating ambiguity and effort duplication.

Before we explore how DAM platforms work, let us first understand what we mean by a digital asset.

What is a Digital Asset in Marketing, Anyway?

Digital assets consist of any material that can be stored electronically, allowing you to produce, administer, distribute, and share information with anybody within or outside of your business. In today’s fast-expanding digital environment, there are no restrictions on the nature of digital assets. The rights to use media files such as films, music, images, documents, and other material are termed assets.

Almost every department utilizes digital assets that contribute to the development and success of your organization. The marketing team develops commercials, social media material, films, as well as emails via collaboration. Teams responsible for operations and services generate documents, schematics, and workflow diagrams. And if you’re collaborating with a supplier network (such as advertising partners), you may generate photos and material which you want to make accessible on-demand.

Using digital asset management (DAM), team members across all business sectors can efficiently search, communicate, and exchange digital materials.

Defining the Digital Asset Management (DAM) Process

Theoretically, DAM is a business process for managing digital permissions and rights and organizing, storing, and retrieving rich media.

Technically, you don’t need a platform to do this. DAM includes the construction of an archive, the building of an architecture or framework to protect and govern digital assets, and the implementation of functionalities that enables users to identify, locate, and retrieve digital assets. A DAM is essentially a collection of database records. Each entry in a database contains searchable information that defines the asset’s contents and usage.

Marketers can work with the IT team to develop this system from scratch. Or, you can make use of some of the best DAM platforms out there today, like Bynder, Canto, etc.

Key Features of a DAM Platform for Marketers

A digital asset management (DAM) platform is intended to store and manage digital assets centrally. It provides both internal and external stakeholders limited/restricted access to company digital assets, such as pictures, graphics, creative documents, video, audio, presentation decks, reports, and much more. It is simple to use and easy to set up. DAM solutions offer a method to boost campaign effectiveness while retaining brand consistency.

To better understand the meaning of DAM platforms, let’s look at the key features it offers you:

1. Asset storage

A DAM provides marketers with secure storage for a limitless number of files of any size, generally on the cloud. This is essential for storing bigger materials like high-resolution images, videos, or audio files. Features like file backups, user-specific privileges, and rights management strengthen the security of stored assets. Users may define asset expiry dates to prevent unwanted virtual clutter while storage is unlimited.

2. Asset classification, organization, and tracking

DAM software serves as a primary point of truth for organizing and monitoring large amounts of digital assets. You may easily find files across asset libraries of just about any size using tags, filters, and sophisticated search functionalities – like in-document search as well as picture recognition – by using tags and filters. Moreover, the majority of DAM solutions let users add metadata tags, monitor version history, set access levels, and identify duplicate asset uploads.

3. Asset creation support

The easiest way to add assets to a DAM platform is by uploading local files and folders or connecting your existing cloud storage. Integrations with asset generation tools, such as native video editors, are also available. Therefore, teams may generate new assets without switching platforms. Assets are created within the DAM ecosystem and reside there as per the DAM rules.

4. Collaboration capabilities

Collaboration encompasses all asset types and media assets, including PDF files, design files, and videos. Organizations may view and edit files from just about anywhere, allowing teams to communicate with the appropriate individuals regardless of their location. Users may remark, pin annotations, and make corrections on uploaded materials, thereby streamlining the entire process of peer review and approval.

5. Asset distribution

A DAM system facilitates the publication of materials from a centralized cloud location. You may also distribute assets straight from your DAM via both public and private links, and you can define expiry dates for connections for added protection. Most DAM solutions permit assets to be incorporated directly into a website. When an asset is altered, or a fresh one is added, the delivery point is immediately updated.

6. Analytics and integrations

A digital asset management system may provide comprehensive analytics and insights on asset inspections, allocations, and interactions. You’ll be able to monitor how the activity has evolved over time and utilize this data to measure the effectiveness of brand assets more precisely. A DAM system is compatible with various applications and cloud-based platforms, like project management tools, content management solutions, as well as image editing software.

Why Are DAM Platforms Important for Marketers?

Did you know that 51% of marketers spend an inordinate amount of time and resources restoring underused or lost assets? Efficient digital asset management necessitates that organizations manage and administer every digital file within their media ecosystem. Your digital asset repository will increase in size as your company and content requirements grow.

Anybody may relate to spending an excessive amount of time searching for a single document! This is the case for the majority of businesses without a DAM solution.

DAM platforms help marketers by:

• Improving access control: Seldom are digital assets adequately preserved without a DAM. There is a strong possibility that unsuitable individuals are using improper assets or are wasting too much time attempting to gain the right ones. DAM solutions develop processes, regulate access, and expedite the approval process to guarantee that the right files reach the right individuals.
• Helping everyone collaborate: With a single platform built to promote collaboration and sharing, you may break down organizational barriers and improve communications. DAM solutions enable the democratization of assets, the creation of flexible processes, and the enhancement of uniformity across all channels.
• Saving time, cost, and effort: If your team is wasting time hunting for incorrectly labeled or lost assets, it is energy, effort, and time that might have been spent on growing the business. DAM solutions, on the other hand, simplify the collection, monitoring, and management of each and every asset within your ecosystem.
• Streamlining the lifecycle of a digital asset: A DAM platform may facilitate asset lifecycle management. It acts as a cradle for any and all branded content, allowing teams to generate, exchange, and manage materials from ideation to release.
• Making life easier for sales teams: DAM solutions facilitate the interchange of material throughout your sales and marketing teams and facilitate the distribution of high-converting assets like spec sheets and customer narratives/persona histories. With self-service access to the relevant documentation, sales teams will never miss a deal due to excessive downtime.

Conclusion: How to Choose the Best DAM Platform for Your Needs?

Not all digital asset management (DAM) platforms are created alike, and so you’d want yours to be the best so that it stands out among the pack. Look for software that provides:

• An intuitive user experience that encourages the adoption
• Optimization features supported by machine learning and artificial intelligence
• Excellent availability to support the needs of a large omnichannel business
• A data-centric strategy for asset management
• The capacity to connect smoothly with the other components of your marketing environment

Adobe’s DAM (an aspect of the Experience Manager package) is among the most widely used digital asset management systems, allowing users to administer all digital assets in one location.

Canto is another prominent digital asset management platform used by major companies like LinkedIn. The tool’s intelligent sharing capabilities allow marketers and creators to work together. Bynder offers a centralized location for the storage of digital assets, integrating Amazon worldwide services to improve performance and scalability. In fact, there are 15+ powerful digital asset management software to choose from, to augment your martech stack.