What Is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

Businesses need a lot (and we mean a lot) of digital content. Product images, sell sheets, videos, branded graphics, and more — there’s no shortage of content types that organizations rely on to power their online and offline efforts. There’s a problem, though. Managing all of these files, plus the workflows to support them, is tough without the help of digital asset management (DAM) software. 

In this article, we’ll address the questions of: “What does DAM entail?”, “Why is digital asset management important?”, and “How does DAM help a wide range of organizations, industries, and roles harness the true power of their content to build stronger brands and deliver superior customer experiences?”

What is digital asset management (DAM)?

Digital asset management software originated in the 1990s alongside the birth of the internet and the rise of digital marketing. As marketers embraced digital as a viable and lucrative channel, it wasn’t long before they needed more and more digital content to communicate with their audiences, represent their brand, and competitively position their offerings online. 

Content volumes grew. And soon organizations struggled to contain their large libraries of images, videos, and graphics. Personal devices, messy shared drive folders, random hard drives, CDs, you name it — content lived everywhere. As a result, marketing teams struggled to find and distribute their content for product launches, campaigns, and other important business initiatives.

Something had to change. So, digital asset management pioneers studied the information management techniques used by librarians and applied them to media assets. Widen, an Acquia company, was at the forefront of this initiative and today, as Acquia DAM, it is among the leading digital asset management platforms in the market. 

As brands take their first steps into asset management, it's common for them to ask “Is Dropbox a digital asset management platform?” They may be relying on similar cloud-based storage tools or scattered hard drives and thumb drives to manage their digital assets initially, but many find they quickly outgrow these systems and need something more. That is why more than 850 of the world’s most respected brands use our enterprise solution, Acquia DAM to:

• Centralize assets in one system. Everything from audio files to brand guidelines and product images can live at a single location. See and interact with previews for logos, documents, videos, work-in-progress files, 360° photography, and more.
• Provide self-serve access. Empower teams — no matter their region or time zone — to find what they need, when they need it. Provide secure, permissioned site access; curate asset selections via portals; or share content individually.
• Publish up-to-date, approved assets. Keep track of assets and stay on top of digital rights management (DRM) efforts. Version control allows you to update once and your asset is automatically published across all share and embed links.
• Automate content workflows. Use metadata to fuel your content marketing workflows. Set up no-code, rule-based automation to notify users when new content is available. Use artificial intelligence (AI) to power auto-tagging and apply metadata.
• Transform and reuse content. Convert images, videos, and audio files to other formats on the fly. Set up common conversions for social media, slide decks, and web pages or crop and resize them as needed.
• Monitor content effectiveness with analytics. Leverage site- and asset-level analytics to inform decisions, as well as review version history for audits.
• Automate marketing workflows. Connect your tools and data to extend your assets from one central source to gain more productivity, security, and control over brand consistency.

Types of digital asset management use cases

Different systems offer a range of DAM capabilities that support various marketing practices and project management workflows. Understanding the challenges that marketing teams need to solve will help brands find the right solution.

Here’s a look at common types of DAM challenges marketers face and where digital asset management software can help. 

• Brand management. Because of the wide range of brand resources that can be stored and managed in a DAM system, marketers often rely on them to support brand management objectives by ensuring that colleagues and external partners represent the brand with consistent messaging and imagery. 
• Sales enablement. A well-oiled sales process starts with collaborative sales and marketing teams, which is likely to include a lot of marketing materials and sales enablement content. So teams need an efficient way to access and distribute that content. Using a digital asset management solution to help with sales enablement can help ensure that sales teams are using the content that marketing creates to support their deals. 
• Enterprise asset management. Running an enterprise organization comes with a lot of content. To ensure content is orchestrated effectively across teams and channels, many teams rely on an integrated DAM solution. 
• Creative asset management. Creative teams are creating content all day long. That’s why it’s important to have a strong, clear strategy around creative asset management to allow creative teams to spend more time creating and less time worrying about process and asset sourcing. 
• Video asset management. With video continuing to grow in popularity, it’s crucial to be able to access, track, and use your video content. Video asset management is a combination of digital asset management methodology and technology to help teams with the creation, distribution, and storage of their video assets.
• Commerce asset management. E-commerce continues to be a dominating channel for just about anyone selling products, goods, and services. Whether consumers use a digital channel to make a purchase or to conduct research before going in-store, it’s important the customer journey is frictionless and you’ll often find you need streamlined technology to deliver a seamless digital shopping experience. 

How does digital asset management software work?

The practice of DAM works by providing organizations with the processes, safeguards, and tools needed to administer, organize, and distribute their digital assets with greater control, intention, and speed. When talking about DAM solutions, it’s important to understand the foundational characteristics that make a DAM system what it is — and not one of the many other related and overlapping technologies on the market. Note how DAM differs from enterprise content management (ECM) technologies and content management systems (CMS). 

A DAM system works as a central repository and control center that allows for various inputs and outputs. Approved users or a DAM admin can upload digital assets into the DAM platform, and then humans (or in the case of some DAM platforms, image recognition software and artificial intelligence, or AI, capabilities) tag each file with metadata. Metadata is information that describes an asset and enables system users to search and find content in the system. Security features within the digital asset management platform control which user groups can access which assets and how they can use them. Users can then download approved assets for their own use or share them with collaborators and partners via portals, share links, embed codes, and system integrations.

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Who needs DAM?

Organizations of all shapes, sizes, and industries benefit from adopting digital asset management to help them organize, manage, and protect their content investment. The structure, process, control, and efficiency that come from DAM — and the systems that support it — benefit a diverse range of industries, including agencies, financial services, food and beverage, government, healthcare, higher education, manufacturing, media and entertainment, nonprofit, print and publishing, retail, sports, and travel and tourism.  

And across these industries, DAM systems help a wide variety of user types and roles save time, collaborate more smoothly, and ultimately drive more revenue for their organization. A DAM platform benefits many people inside and outside of an organization, but creators (like graphic designers, photographers, or videographers), marketers, and IT professionals need DAM most to support their day-to-day work.

Benefits of digital asset management

So why do you need a DAM system? With DAM software, brands have a central source to store and organize their digital assets. That centralization leads to valuable benefits like simplifying the creative process, ensuring brand consistency, and integrating the martech stack, which can lead to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for martech. Moreover, a digital asset management solution – particularly when leveraged as a key element of a digital experience platform (DXP) – makes it easier to publish the right content across digital channels at the right time with the right message. This level of omnichannel customer experience grows lifetime value, brand loyalty, and customer satisfaction. 

Where to go from here

If you’re ready to take control of your digital assets, your next question might be, “How do I choose the best DAM software for my company?” Start by assessing your team’s requirements and how DAM technology will fit into your entire digital ecosystem. You can do this by outlining use cases, comparing features, and more. You can also dig deeper with questions like: What do we want to accomplish? How many assets do we have? How will this new software change our workflows? 

The vendor evaluation process takes time, so give yourself room to explore and even test-drive different solutions via free trials or proof-of-concept (aka sandbox) sites. Different DAM solutions offer different capabilities and strengths. The key is to figure out your requirements and priorities, and then align those with what a system can deliver. For a step-by-step guide to choosing the right DAM software, head over to our DAM Evaluation Toolkit. It’s packed with all sorts of advice, tips, and activities that’ll put you on the path to finding the best DAM software for your business. And to learn about Acquia DAM, request a demo today.