Digital Asset Management for Retail

In the world of retail and consumer goods, visuals are critically important. An Instagram photo of a strong and determined woman in athletic shoes may motivate someone to go for a run and help them imagine how those very same shoes could improve their performance. A video highlighting the sustainability of a brand’s cleaning products could remind a buyer of their own personal values and bolster their devotion to that brand. Clean, crisp images and consistent brand elements convey trust, and might be exactly what a skeptical digital shopper needs to take a chance on a new brand. 

But there’s a problem. With more and more channels, teams, product images, graphics, photographs, videos, and other digital assets and content to manage, retailers are struggling to deliver the digital experiences needed to win the attention, spend, and loyalty of their audiences. In this article, we’ll discuss how digital asset management (DAM) is helping retailers harness the true power of their visuals and other digital assets to move their business forward. Here’s what you need to know.

Why do retailers need DAM?

By leveraging a DAM system, you can overcome many of the challenges associated with managing large volumes of content and assets to provide your customers with an experience that is consistent, connected, and personalized across channels, devices, and touchpoints. In other words, you can deliver an omnichannel experience.

With a DAM system, your brand’s photos, images, videos, and other content are all housed and controlled within a centralized library. This means there’s no question about which assets are most recent and approved for use. Service teams can search and find the how-to videos and documents they need to quickly and effectively help a customer. Creatives can pull files directly into editing and design tools for faster workflows and less time to market. And with a combined DAM and product information management (PIM) platform, multiple departments can bring together textual product information, technical specifications, images, videos, brand content, documents, and more into a centralized hub for greater accuracy and consistency across marketing and sales efforts.

As a retailer, you need to move fast – but not so fast that the accuracy and quality of your efforts suffer. A DAM solution gives you the best of both worlds. You can facilitate faster creative and operational workflows, quickly bundle and distribute approved assets to partners and resellers, and update or remove assets across the web in minutes via the most recent version of a file that’s housed in the DAM system. You get all of this speediness with the control you need to ensure that only approved, up-to-date, accurate, and high-quality content make their way to customers. 

Benefits of DAM for retail

According to research from consulting experts McKinsey & Company, omnichannel customers not only shop 1.7 times more than single-channel shoppers, they also spend more. A DAM system ensures that you can support your omnichannel marketing efforts and capture more sales. It also helps you grow and scale your business, improve efficiency, and get the most out of marketing budgets. And that’s not just speculation — retailers themselves are quick to share details about all the benefits they receive from having a DAM system.

Support growth and scaling

HARMAN International, an audio electronics subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, uses their DAM platform to provide internal teams and external partners with the content they need to sell HARMAN products. Rather than managing assets in two disconnected technologies, they use a combined approach of DAM and PIM. This provides them with a single source of truth for all of their brand, product, and corporate content. This eliminates confusion over duplicate files, gives them a central hub from which to automate asset updates across the web, and enables more seamless distribution — ultimately, helping HARMAN grow their business and scale their efforts with greater speed and efficiency. 

Centralize product content

Limited access to the brand and product content for over 5,000 SKUs created a frustrating and error-prone process for PRADCO Outdoor Brands. They needed a better way to get their content and product information out to teams and customers. To solve this, PRADCO implemented a PIM system alongside their existing DAM solution. Their combined DAM and PIM solution replaced siloed spreadsheets and storage tools with a centralized location for teams to find all approved product content on their own.

Streamline distribution

In addition to their own internal teams, Citizen Watch has over 3,000 independent retailers who need access to brand-approved artwork. By housing this artwork in a DAM system, Citizen can centralize their content and empower their teams and partners to find the content they need on their own. This has drastically reduced the amount of time the Citizen team spends answering emails and sending images, freeing up their time to focus on more creative and strategic work. Additionally, having a DAM system allows Citizen to control who has access to what content and when, so they can feel confident that only the right creative is out in the market.

Leverage analytics

Brooks, a global retail leader in specialty running products, produces over 30,000 new digital assets a year. With such a large content investment, they need to feel confident that they are putting money toward the right assets and creatives. Their DAM system gives them this confidence by supplying them with the data and insights they need to make smarter content decisions. Now, when assets don’t perform well, they can adjust their strategy. If system users aren’t viewing or downloading certain creatives, they know about it and can take steps to increase asset discovery. But most importantly, Brooks is making more data-driven decisions that will give them a higher return on their creative, marketing, and content investments.

Get started

People want to see what they’re buying. They want to experience it and connect with it in ways that make them feel confident that they’re making the right purchasing decisions. Your brand’s digital assets, images, videos, sales collateral, and other content play a huge role in helping you achieve this emotional connection with your customers. By managing your digital assets with greater efficiency, speed, control, and insight, you can go to market faster, boost customer service, and keep that digital register ringing.

Ready for some DAM help? Our DAM system, Acquia DAM (Widen), will help you organize, manage, and distribute your content across teams, tools, and channels, while ensuring that your creative and operational workflows are moving at the pace you need to beat out the competition and drive more sales. To learn more about Acquia DAM, schedule a demo or check out our Acquia DAM overview today!