Why Marketers Need a Digital Asset Management (DAM) System

Marketers who are looking to build beautiful brands and create consistent customer experiences across all channels are increasingly turning to digital asset management (DAM) systems to handle the creation, storage and distribution of their own assets.

In fact, IDC reports that 4 in 10 companies are either shopping for or planning to buy DAM software to help them maximise use of their creative assets. And the 3 in 10 companies that already have a DAM solution are looking at alternatives.

So why are marketers adopting DAMs, and what are the key benefits?

Demand for content fuels drive for digital asset management systems

Today’s marketers must reach their prospects on more touchpoints than ever before. This means that more versions of creative assets are needed to populate an ever-increasing number of digital channels.

DAMs have simply emerged to fill that need and enable marketing teams to populate those channels with their content, reuse assets where they can, and make changes quickly and easily.

What is a digital asset management system?

A DAM system is – in essence – a more sophisticated version of existing file-storing methods that can handle large and complex file types.

Without a centralised DAM system, large numbers of assets and documents are typically created and then stored in different locations. For some that may be a shared drive. For others, the creative agency may store and re-supply assets as required.

Typically, a mix of systems results in a lot of time wasted hunting for, requesting or re-supplying those assets.

What are the key benefits of digital asset management systems?

Adopting a digital asset management system results in a 10% productivity boost for most marketing teams.

DAMs boost marketing productivity by:

• Saving time spent searching for assets
  DAMs help eliminate confusion and time lost looking for and supplying existing assets.

• Allowing for better re-use of existing assets
  Minor alterations — such as copy changes to existing campaigns — can be made cheaply and efficiently. That benefit is multiplied many times over for teams that work in different time zones and need to adapt copy for different languages.

• Creating consistency
  When used as part of a marketing operations workflow and approval process, a DAM helps reduce the risk of unapproved materials going out by providing visibility over campaign materials.

• Enforcing compliance
  If the DAM allows metadata to be added, the expiry date of usage rights can be attributed to assets, reducing the risk of non-compliant use of licensed content.

• Promoting collaboration
  DAMs enable advertisers to collaborate internally and with third party suppliers to create marketing work.

• Allowing marketers to be more strategic
  This is perhaps the biggest benefit of having a centralised DAM. When managed centrally, assets can be deployed strategically across a business in increasingly sophisticated ways. Marketers can map digital assets to their marketing model and create assets for each state of the customer journey. For example, every single asset can be associated with the buyer journey or you can sort them by region.

Regardless of the size of a marketing team, it’s clear that investing in technology for better digital asset management will reduce costs, increase productivity and consistency, and give your brand its best chance of converting prospects to customers.

Where can you start?

If you’re looking for a DAM, consider Simple’s Digital Asset Management solution, which provides a central place for teams to manage their marketing assets across all media channels.

In Simple, every asset is assigned relevant information such as keywords and usage rights, so you can quickly find the material you need and have the confidence to use it.

Use our DAM to view all marketing materials across channels and throughout the customer journey, so you can ensure you’re creating beautiful, consistent customer experiences.

Through our API, assets can be mapped to intelligent workflows and passed off to common cloud-based channel execution tools such as marketing automation, CRM and CMS systems.

Book a demo to see how Simple’s Marketing Operations Cloud and Simple Asset Manager works.