How digital asset management empowers marketers and unlocks business potential

The world is swimming in content, and sometimes it’s hard to stay afloat. More channels, more products, higher expectations, globalisation – producing, managing and distributing content in this complex and competitive environment is a challenge for marketers everywhere.

But through automation, workflow tools, application integrations and sophisticated analytics, a new generation of digital asset management platforms is helping solve these problems. Read on to discover more.

By ANDREW LOMAS

Your comprehensive guide to choosing a modern DAM

The future of DAM is here! Discover how the digital landscape is changing, how DAM helps boost revenue and five key solutions to creating a holistic customer experience.

Modern DAMs are built for more than just file storage.

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Marketing teams need digital asset management platforms

There’s never been more pressure on marketing teams to deliver results. But with content volumes increasing exponentially and customers’ expectations higher than ever, managing the production and distribution of marketing assets – brand collateral, advertising campaigns, content marketing – across multiple channels is invariably complicated and often costly.

The digital asset management industry is meeting these challenges head on. A new generation of DAM platforms – from highly configurable multi-purpose solutions to simpler specialist products – provides marketers with sophisticated tools to not only overcome production and management obstacles but to open up new revenue opportunities and grow their businesses.

Why traditional DAMs don't meet brand managers' needs

Over the past 15 or so years DAM solutions have evolved dramatically in response to the ever-changing needs of content creators, and there are some great products out there. But modern brand management presents very different challenges to the creation and distribution of marketing content.

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Brand management’s unique challenges

Brand managers need to have confidence in the integrity, accuracy and responsible use of assets once they leave the safe and knowable world of their organisation’s DAM. Modern DAMs often utilise content delivery networks and web-scraper technology to track asset usage online and ensure assets are updated when changes are made.

Ensure compliance and protect your digital rights

In a competitive global market, being able to reliably ensure the correct contractual and regulatory use of your content is crucial. Some contemporary DAMs offer proactive and reactive dynamic digital rights management, allowing you to locate outdated or expired assets online and revoke access where necessary. 

Automate and streamline local area marketing

Local area marketing (LAM) applications are a good way to template co-branded messaging but most LAM tools are disconnected from their content sources. Be sure that your DAM platform offers built-in templating functionality, giving you more certainty over what assets are being used and more control over outcomes.

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How you can guarantee brand consistency while slashing costs

A consistent brand is a dependable brand, and dependable brands are trusted by consumers. Find out how one modern DAM platform’s native templating functionality ensures the integrity of your brand identity once assets have entered the wild…

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Consistency is the key

Brand consistency is critical to businesses, creating trust with customers and boosting revenue. Inconsistent branding, however, can be disastrous. A 2018 report by Accenture found that US companies alone lost $756 billion from customers abandoning brands because they no longer trusted them. 

Bridging the technology gap

Many DAMs offer brand portals for teams to access and download assets, but how do you know that those assets are being used correctly? Brandfolder’s templating tool gives you brand control at each touchpoint while also allowing sales teams and local area marketers to easily customise assets for regional impact.

Integration with design software

Using Brandfolder’s Adobe InDesign plugin you can tag fields on layout as editable and then upload the package into your company Brandfolder. Users then select the template and open the online editor, adding their own local information to slide decks, press releases, business cards and other sales and branding collateral.

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Peace of mind: Automate rights controls to protect your brand

In a globalised market, managing asset usage rights and permissions is increasingly complex. Read on to find out how Brandfolder’s dynamic digital rights management allows you to proactively establish rights within the DAM and enforce these rules automatically on assets in the wild.

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Protect your assets to protect your brand

Managing how audio, video and photographic assets are distributed has become increasingly complex: movie studios spend millions waging war against pirates, while large corporations employ armies of minions to police the use of their content. If you lose control of your assets, you undermine your band.

The convergence of DAM and DRM

Brandfolder’s proactive DRM functionality allows you to organise, distribute and manage your asset rights and permissioning: set asset availability and expiry dates, build in approval workflows and asset request processes, and customise specific permissions for different collections.

Automated rights and version enforcement

Brandfolder’s web crawler scours websites, hunting for outdated or expired assets. This saves you the time and cost of policing versions and manually checking expiration dates, usage rules and copyright on thousands of assets in potentially millions of locations. The platform’s Smart CDN also propagates changes across the internet, allowing you to instantly update assets in multiple locations.

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Keep it simple: Distribute and update brand assets with ease

Many DAMs are great at handling and sharing large quantities of assets, but brand managers need more than just a powerful repository. Discover how Brandfolder empowers brand managers to edit, distribute and track the usage of assets.

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Managing the asset lifecycle

Brandfolder’s tagging, merging, editing and versioning functions make it easy for non-creatives to make adjustments to assets on the fly, while the system’s AI will detect and alert you to duplicate assets. You can even convert videos to different formats, resize them, add watermarks and manage rights, eliminating the need for video software.

Distribute and update with confidence

Brandfolder’s asset availability controls allow you to set expiry dates on share links for individual assets, while you can also set an identification requirement to track who has accessed what assets. And if changes need to be made to an asset after it’s been published the Smart CDN can push updates to all asset instances.

Keep track of who’s looking at what

To work out which assets are most valuable and determine ROI, it’s important for brand managers to be able to report on where brand assets are, who’s interacting with them and how often. Brandfolder captures system event data while also tracking asset usage on the web, presenting usage data in its insights interfaces.

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Smooth sailing: How to streamline your brand asset production

The best marketing ideas will always be undermined by bad creative processes. Make sure your DAM possesses effective workflow tools that streamline collaboration, automate manual tasks and provide both visibility and control.

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Full transparency throughout the asset lifecycle 

At any point during the asset production process you should be able to check progress and approval status. Brandfolder can be integrated with workflow tools like Jira, allowing you to manage the production process to completion, and then automatically upload completed assets into a hold status in Brandfolder, pending review.

Integrated communications and notifications

All communication relating to the production of an asset can be done within the Brandfolder application environment itself. Simply add a comment to an asset and tag your relevant teammates in to generate both in-app and email notifications, or use the Slack integration and let the bots keep you in the loop.

Access for the right people at the right time

To protect sensitive and business-critical brand assets a DAM must have built-in systems for preventing unauthorised access. With Brandfolder you can both control what assets are available to be viewed and edited and for what periods of time, allowing you to work on an asset within a shared or public-facing collection but keep it hidden until final approval.

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Your comprehensive guide to choosing a modern DAM

The future of DAM is here! Discover how the digital landscape is changing, how DAM helps boost revenue and five key solutions to creating a holistic customer experience.

Modern DAMs are built for more than just file storage.

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