The ultimate guide to digital asset management

Today, teams are tasked with producing, managing, and maintaining thousands of pieces of digital media (every year). That’s where digital asset management comes in.  

Digital asset management (DAM) is a new solution that helps teams store, share, and organize content in a centralized location.

You no longer need to Slack your designer for creative files or send your writer an email to let them know when their draft is due—with DAM, you can get it all done from a single integrated system. 

If your marketing teams are operating without a digital asset management system, please read this page from top to bottom—it’s going to change the way you and your teams work (for the better). 

What Is Digital Asset Management?

Digital asset management refers to software that makes it easy for businesses to compile, organize, filter, find, and use digital media and content.

These file types could be creative assets, planning documents, articles, marketing materials, SEO-targeted pieces, email campaigns, onboarding information—really any digital asset.

However, not all DAM software performs equally. Basic systems allow you to organize your content in folders, while others enable search and tagging to help you locate the right piece of content. Yet, this is just the beginning when it comes to DAM functionality.

Modern-day marketers need DAM software to stay on top of their brand assets, content creation pipeline, and aggressive business expectations. 

Why Digital Asset Management Matters

Not having a DAM system means your staffers are wasting time, and therefore, not being as productive. That cuts directly into the bottom line. 

Creative teams know the pain of getting bombarded with requests from martech, marketing, sales, product, and other teams every time they need a company logo or a tweak to an existing image. Just think of how much time can be saved without the incessant back and forth. 

DAM software creates efficiencies and puts an end to the grunt work that weighs down busy teams. And, when your digital assets are easily accessible within other content management systems, marketing teams can have a much-improved user experience. 

Advantages of Digital Asset Management Software

Save Time

Time is money. Every minute you save is valuable to your bottom line.

Digital asset management provides your teams with automation and workflows to help you get projects across the line faster. Create, publish, and distribute content and marketing assets at scale with a centralized hub. 

Stretch Your Budget

A digital asset management system helps you do more with less. 

It’ll give you a platform to consolidate your budget and content marketing plans. Notice an important project falling behind? Borrow from a low-priority campaign to ensure it stays on track. 

Protect Your Brand

Brand management is not a one-and-done part of your business. 

You have to work hard to ensure the messaging, voice, colors, logos, icons, taglines, and assets stay consistent with your brand guidelines. 

Ensure the right content gets shipped and old branding stays locked away for historical and inspirational purposes.

Make Digital Content Accessible

Content’s value comes in large part from its accessibility. Your digital content can (and should) be shared and used by anyone who needs access (anytime, anywhere).

A DAM platform lets you organize content, tag relevant users, and share assets to get the right content in front of the right people.  

Explore New Possibilities

With more time and budget, you’ll be empowered to test new use cases and see what works. You won’t be fighting a weekly or monthly battle of getting items across the finish line. 

How Do DAM Systems Work?

Digital asset management systems help users locate the digital assets they need. From start to finish, teams can collaborate and publish assets in various file formats, share marketing campaigns with key stakeholders and stay within brand guidelines. 

Using a workflow integration with campaigns and tasks, teams can access assets more quickly as well as repurpose existing files as needed. 

Choosing a DAM System

When choosing a digital asset management partner, there are some important attributes to look for.

• Go with a company with a strong track record of marketing industry leadership. Chat with other clients that are using it and read reviews. 
• Transparent customer experience. A platform should offer onboarding training and troubleshooting support as needed.   
• Intuitive functionality. Request a demo to see exactly how the DAM software works and help your team members get up to speed quickly. 
• Easy integration. Ideally, you want all your tools to work together and speak the same language. 

Features to Look for in a Digital Asset Management Platform

Before you invest in DAM software, you need to decide on the features that your marketing team wants and needs. 

Below are a few of the goodies we offer that your team must have: 

Marketing Calendar

Life is hectic and managing a marketing team makes it even more so.

A marketing calendar helps you see the bigger picture of when campaigns launch as well as the steps you need to take to be ready. 

Annual Campaign Calendar

Updating in real-time, this calendar allows you to see all the planned and in-progress marketing campaigns in a single location.  

Team Calendars

To encourage collaboration, team calendars allow all marketers to view content projects in progress.  

Task and Campaign Drilldowns

Don’t want to interrupt your marketing geniuses at work? This feature allows you to look at a detailed view of each campaign and task, to find out who is working on what and their progress.  

Advanced Filtering and Visualization

You want to focus on what matters most and filtering is essential as is visualizing the project. The filter options include:

• Target audience

• Geography

• Customizable metadata

• Channel

Global Asset Governance

All digital assets need to align with your branding. Here, you approve all assets to ensure brand consistency across the campaigns. 

Library

Store all your approved brand assets in one location for your team to utilize with this content management system.  

Planning and Budgeting

Planning and budgeting are necessary parts of managing a marketing team. This software can lend a hand. Here’s how:

• Shared calendars: Visualize all the marketing campaigns both current and future. 
• Campaign workspaces: When multiple creative teams work on a single project, keep everyone on task and on schedule. 
• Budget management: See how much of your budget each campaign consumes and determine how much you can allocate to new endeavors. 
• Capacity planning: It helps balance your resources and ensures everyone reaches their potential. 

Content Performance

Do your integrated marketing campaigns appeal to the target audience? Visualize each step of a customer’s user experience to ensure product information remain effective.  

Campaign Analytics

Easily identify your high-performing activities, so you can help to drive sales across your customer base as well as improve customer experience. 

Project Management

Project management is one of our features that can help you feel confident about your workflow and ability to meet deadlines. Options include:

• Campaign dashboard: Quickly and easily see all the components of a large marketing event.  
• Shared campaign workspace: Most projects require input from several teams. This space encourages collaboration to create the best final product available. 
• Workload management: This feature makes it easier to follow the workflow to ensure each member of the team is on task and on time.  
• SLA reporting: You need Service Level Agreements reporting to check responses as well as resolutions. 

Workflow and Intakes

You need a way to make sure that new work assignments don’t end up buried in an inbox. With the workflow and intake features, your team can standardize the workflow into an intuitive process. 

Integrations

You need your digital media assets in one location whether it’s a Microsoft file or something from your Google Drive or Dropbox.   

You want your stakeholders to experience rich media files that meet your brand guidelines. Explore use cases and a variety of file formats. By integrating with this DAM software, you can maximize your IT investment and time-to-value ratio. 

Editing and Final Approval

You need to control the digital content that your team uses to ensure its brand marketing material. With this digital asset management platform, you can easily control the edits and approvals. 

Get Started With Digital Asset Management

When you’re ready to treat your team of marketers to all the DAM software goodies they want and need, we have the digital asset management software to give them.