top marketing priorities
with digital asset management
How digital asset management can help achieve
marketing executives’ top priorities
In a survey sponsored by ClickSquared, The Relevancy Group recently asked 360 U.S. marketers about their top three priorities for the upcoming year. The top priorities identified by the marketers are listed in the table below. The numbers add up to more than 100 percent because each marketer named more than one priority.
Priority
Percent
.
1 Improving segmentation and targeting
35%
.
2 Integrating into social channels, leveraging social data
30%
.
3 Increasing relevancy via dynamic content
20%
4 Centralizing our customer data and making it actionable
19%
.
5 Improving response attribution
18%
6 Greater use of testing in order to optimize our mailings
17%
7 Hiring more staff
17%
8 Holistic reporting dashboard inclusive of all channels
17%
9 Centralizing cross-channel marketing to one system
15%
.
10 Centralizing marketing applications into one suite
9%
“The information gleaned from marketers across the country tells
us an interesting story about where the market is today and where
it is headed,” “Today’s marketers are often working in silos, seldom
sharing best practices or customer data across their organizations.”
“Marketers are searching for a way to better aggregate customer
data and improve communication.
1”
said David Daniels, co-founder and CEO of The Relevancy Group.
Of marketers’ top ten priorities, five can be effectively addressed with digital asset management software. DAM software can help make segmentation and targeting decisions actionable by providing front line marketers with
videos and marketing materials to sales and marketing reps interfacing with their customers, but DAM systems are now connecting digital assets direct with the customer. The most advanced DAM systems aid integration into social channels by enabling marketers to publish and post assets to those networks directly from the DAM platform, eliminating the time-consuming process of downloading assets from the library, going into the social platform and uploading to post. DAM enables dynamic content by providing one-file management of digital assets that can be accessed by dynamic content engines to provide a custom experience to customers. DAM improves response attribution by providing a centralized repository for digital content. DAM also helps marketers centralize marketing applications into one suite by managing each digital asset throughout the complete digital asset lifecycle.
This white paper will tackle each of the five marketing priorities that can be addressed with the implementation of DAM systems. We’ll lay out the obstacles that stand between you and your goals, and fill you in on how DAM can help you overcome those obstacles.
Priority #1: Improving segmentation and marketing
Most marketers spend considerable time and effort understanding their current and potential customers. Clients and prospects are typically segmented into groups with common needs and interests and specific marketing messages are then developed for each group. The challenge is then to mobilize the extended sales and marketing organization to deliver appropriate messages to each marketing segment. Providing every member of the team that communicates with customers and prospects with an understanding of which communications assets fit which market segments and ensuring access to the appropriate assets can be challenging in an organization where digital assets are stored manually on local drives or network shares. Knowledge of which assets are available and where they are located is typically limited to a few individuals. Sales representatives, channel partners, members of the media and others that need content are left scrambling to try and find the person in the marketing organization that can point them to the content they are looking for.
DAM makes acting on segmentation decisions easier and more efficient by providing a central repository for digital media files and a set of tools to store, manage, find and repurpose these files to increase their value in the marketing process. Marketers can associate digital assets with different concepts related to subsets of customers, stages of the sales cycle, etc. Metadata such as the type of content, intended target audience, keywords, date, etc. are associated with each digital asset, making them easy to find with a search.
Users can easily find the right content to address a specific target audience. Searching for assets related to a particular market segment is as easy as identifying the market segment in a search. Markets can easily limit their search to specific types of assets such as banners or images associated with a particular product. Thumbnails for all assets designed for that particular market segment immediately appear. The search results also provide more information about the assets such as history, rights, creator, date, dimensions, running length, etc. All the information marketers need to know about a digital asset is provided to facilitate the creation and distribution of marketing materials targeted to specific segments.
In addition, assets can almost always be associated with a number of categories, file types and metadata fields, among other data. This allows users to quickly and easily narrow searches. The governance features of any good DAM system ensure users only see and have access to the current, approved assets. Unreleased, unapproved and expired assets cannot be accessed. The result is that people inside your organization and partners can easily find the right assets to create and enhance customer relationships.
KeyFruit points out that DAM systems can also help improve the quality of creative content. “Arming the creative team with a digital asset management system offers greater efficiency, access to a host of materials, and
information about the content such as when and how it was used, rights and permissions, and its association with other stored and catalogued assets. Thus, allowing for more time spent dedicated to the core function of developing highly creative, quality, brand conscious and memorable marketing deliverables.”2
Priority #2: Integrating into social channels
Social media is playing an increasingly important role in marketing because of its demonstrated ability to reach large numbers of potential customers. Of the 750 million Facebook users, 52 percent use the site every day. Facebook generates 4 billion “likes” every day and Eventbrite found that each “like” delivers $1.34 in sales. Coca Cola’s promoted trend on Twitter generated 86.5 million impressions. Evian’s “Roller Skating Babies”
generated 65.5 million plays on YouTube over two years.3 So it should come as no surprise that 82 percent of chief
marketing officers worldwide plan to increase use of social media in the next three to five years, according to an IBM survey.4
Research from the digital marketing agency Web Liquid shows that Facebook posts with photos saw a 0.37 percent engagement rate and posts with videos saw a 0.31 percent engagement rate while text only posts saw a 0.27 percent engagement rate and posts with only hyperlinks (no embedded media) saw a 0.15 percent engagement rate.
Momentus Media, which provides marketing software for use within Facebook, saw similar results when analyzing the top 20,000 Facebook pages. The company found that Facebook posts with photos had a 0.21 percent engagement rate and posts with videos a 0.11 percent engagement rate while posts with links had only a 0.07 percent engagement rate.5
DAM systems make it easy for members of the extended enterprise to find the best digital asset for a particular social media post. The latest generation of DAM systems goes a step further by enabling markets to publish or post assets directly to social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube from the DAM interface. This eliminates the time-consuming process of downloading from the library, going to your social media platform, and uploading the digital asset.
The latest generation of DAM systems also allows organizations to use one file located in the DAM system across many different posts on the full range of social media sites and other online spaces. Instead of downloading digital files to post images and videos, users simply use HTML embed codes. This means that, if a change is made to that file, all of the instances where the file has been used will automatically reflect updates. If it should ever become necessary to withdraw the file, that can also be accomplished very easily without having to track down and modify each individual posting. Another advantage of this approach, in the case of cloud-based DAM, is that the computing resources and bandwidth required to deliver video and images are provided by the vendor without any impact on the user’s IT systems.
#3 Increasing relevancy via dynamic content
Dynamic content is an emerging technique that involves automatically inserting content within email, print, mobile and online campaigns based on information that fits visitors and viewers into certain market segments. The key advantage of dynamic content is that it makes it possible to create carefully targeted and highly personalized and relevant marketing campaigns. Making the campaign relevant to the user increases engagement and helps increase the likelihood of conversion. In email, for example, dynamic content can improve open and click through rates and reduce the number of opt outs and spam complaints.
DAM software (especially DAM software with robust and practical enough metadata functions) can help reduce the time required to identify content that is relevant to each market segment; this is especially handy in designing dynamic media campaigns. The latest generation of DAM systems provides an application programming interface (API) that enables developers to write integrations that capture content automatically from the DAM system and insert it automatically into email, print, mobile or online campaigns.
#5 Improving response attribution
By providing a central repository for digital assets, DAM systems make it possible to track the use of each asset throughout its lifecycle. DAM software also helps marketers empower internal and external teams with self-service tools and on-demand marketing resources, whereas you might otherwise have to rely on the marketing team to provide these assets.
Streamlining digital asset management this way improves your ability track which digital assets, formats and versions are being used in which marketing programs, social networks, blogs, etc. This, in turn, means marketers can use DAM solutions to improve their use of analytics tools to understand which assets are effective and which they can do without. By getting a better understanding of your assets, you should be able to learn who your power users are and which user groups need extra attention.
Priority #10: Centralizing marketing applications into one suite
Marketers recognize that the fewer applications they need to work with, the more efficient their marketing operation can be. Administration, training and transferring data from one system to another can take time and eat up resources. DAM software frees those resources up by providing a single solution through which content is stored, cataloged, managed and distributed throughout the entire digital asset lifecycle. By providing a central destination for these tasks, DAM systems often make it possible to eliminate the cost of operating and supporting multiple software systems that would otherwise manage, distribute and archive digital assets.
Companies without central asset libraries, collaborative tools and a means of getting assets into the proper format often spend time and money on redundancy, creating assets that are similar or identical to ones that already exist because they are not aware of the existing assets or can’t find them. DAM systems encourage and streamline asset repurposing, which is the adapting of images, videos and other assets for use in different channels, promotions and campaigns.
Repurposing gets more value from your assets by enabling them to fill multiple roles in the marketing process. It also save you the time and money you might otherwise have spent on creating redundant or unnecessary assets from scratch.
DAM return on investment
The right DAM system can generate a substantial return on investment (ROI) by providing savings in several key areas. DAM systems save on labor costs because they reduce the time spent searching for digital assets, determining which version of assets are current, and reformatting digital assets. Some DAM systems goes one step further by enabling users to post digital assets on social media sites from within the DAM system.
Lots of vendors recognize that repurposing assets is one of the primary
sources of DAM ROI. Widen Enterprises, for example, created a
DAM metric called “the repurposing ratio” that helps marketers
understand just how much their DAM systems are helping them get
returns on asset creation and avoid redundancies.
DAM software can free additional revenues by reducing the time required to get new products to market. DAM makes selected subsets of your organization’s digital assets available to authorized users such as your own
marketing team, sales representatives, channel members and publications. The ability to easily find and utilize digital assets can reduce the time required to implement the marketing campaigns required to launch a new product, reducing time to market.
Calculating the labor costs of inefficient DAM processes is an important first step in understanding the benefits you could get from supporting your marketing workflows with the right DAM software. These numbers are hard to pin down, but even estimates will start you down the path to laying out more specific DAM requirements for vendors to meet.
Calculating your DAM labor costs
No. of people who spendany time searching for assets (to use or distribute)
Average DAM search hours per
person annually
Number of people involved in administration of current asset management
Average DAM search hours per
Conclusion
One of the keys to overcoming your marketing challenges is the ability to effectively manage and utilize digital assets whose importance in the marketing process is continually growing. DAM can help marketing executives achieve their goals by helping the extended enterprise identify and utilize digital assets to enhance communications with customers and prospects. DAM software also streamlines the process of identifying and distributing assets according to segmentation, file conversion to fit social network posting restrictions, dynamic content delivery and response attribution.
Perhaps most importantly, DAM software allows you to repurpose time and talent, so you can hone in on your message and strategy rather having them tied up in digital housekeeping.
