What is Digital Asset Management?
Digital Asset Management is both a discipline and a technology. It is the process by which digital assets such as images, videos, brand assets, and audio files are stored, managed, discovered, and made available for use. Digital Asset Management is also the path to transforming your marketing efficiency, security and results.
The discipline of Digital Asset Management
According to industry statistics, Marketers and those who use digital assets spend, on average, 40 minutes looking for a specific image or other digital assets-30% of the time they never find this asset. Factor in the cost of lost or damaged (accidentally reduced file sizes or format changes) and the annual cost to even a medium-sized organization is substantial and mostly hidden from view.
By applying the principles of Digital Asset Management, with the right Digital Asset Management software, finding assets can be reduced by as much as 85%. Other benefits include increased asset usage (increasing the ROI for each asset you've created), and brand protection (e.g., from copyright infringements).
What's the difference between an image library and Digital Asset Management
The role of what many software solutions call an image library is storage. Digital Asset Management allows you to store assets and manage every aspect of access, discovery, file updates, copyright protection, and compliance. The best Digital Asset Management software solutions use metadata, and other AI features to help you discover assets, using tagging features and visual discovery that is not available, even from solutions such as Dropbox. With meta-tagging in place, a Digital Asset Management software solution allows you to search through 10's of thousands of images and find the exact image you need in seconds, even if you don't have the exact image name. That's not possible with file and folders-based systems.
When is Digital Asset Management needed?
Anyone who has a collection of more than a few hundred digital assets should seriously consider a Digital Asset Management Solution. It's the most cost-effective way to streamline interactions between internal teams, even if they work remotely. It's also the safest way to work with content creators, ensuring that your business always maintains control over access to the digital assets you have commissioned and owned. It's also an effective way to manage images and digital assets provided by wholesalers or stock libraries.
'Many marketing platforms promote the fact they provide an 'image library.' Isn't that the same as a Digital Asset Management solution?'
In most cases, marketing platforms promote a folder storage system as an image library. When you think of the way that books are arranged in an actual library, the distinction becomes clearer. Imagine having to look through countless boxes to find just the book you want. Digital Asset Management solution works like a real library. It allows you to view assets and discover them through simple tagging.
Features of a Digital Asset Management solution
Below is just a few things that a Digital Asset Management solution like the one at the core of XL.Today™ does, that a folder-based storage system does not:
- Version control
- Brand management
- Image editing and format conversion
- Approval paths and workflows
- Instant search and find with meta-data tagging
- Real-time chat for internal and external users to improve communications
- Integration with other internal applications where media is being used
- Usage reports to see where files are being used, and by whom
- User access, editing, and rights administration to limit access as needed
- Hosted, secure storage instead of computers and devices
Digital Asset Management XL.Today™ style
XL.Today™ uses a Digital Asset Management system in the way a race car uses a high-performance engine. It is the powerhouse that drives a smart campaign creation workflow, allowing Marketers to create multi-channel campaigns at blazing fast speeds. It's how we elevate your targeting, personalization, and campaign results to levels previously unthinkable. Sign up for a trial today and experience the 'XL.Today™' difference for yourself.
