Digital Asset Management (DAM) Guide [2025]

Digital Asset Management (DAM) enables organizations to transform content into clarity, speed, and impact. It’s not as simple as where files live; it’s the strategy that makes them usable, searchable, and powerful.

Most organizations can find suitable storage solutions. Where they go to battle is with storytelling at scale. Assets exist, but aren’t managed to be easily found, reused, or shared. Teams recreate work, brand consistency slips, wasted time and effort increase, and great content never reaches the people it was meant for.

At Stacks, our mission is simple: Simplify the DAM world and empower storytelling.

We’re consultants first. We don’t just stand up a tool. Teams that work with us learn how to build their own DAM ecosystem, so they can grow it, govern it, and sustain it long after implementation. Our work is about giving your people the confidence, structure, and standards they need to get DAM done daily.

A Beginner's Guide to DAM

This guide is here to help you understand DAM the way experts do: as the foundation for how organizations communicate, create, and scale their story. In this all-encompassing DAM guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about digital asset management. 

Read on to learn: 

• What digital asset management is
• DAM functions and capabilities
• How digital asset management works
• Benefits of DAM
• Who uses digital asset management
• What DAM is used for
• How to know if your organization needs DAM
• Real-world DAM examples 

What Is Digital Asset Management?

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is the process of creating, uploading, organizing, storing, retrieving, and distributing all of an organization’s digital files and content in one centralized repository. 

The process relies on DAM platforms, which are third-party, cloud- or server–based software programs that specialize in managing a high volume of assets. DAM platforms come equipped with features that improve searchability and accessibility, and security tools to monitor and restrict who has permission to access assets. 

DAM creates a strategic system that helps companies and brands get the most value out of their assets. It establishes standardized protocols that ensure efficient and secure file storage and organization, making it easy for team members to access, edit, and share what they need, when they need it. 

From creative teams and designers to marketing and sales, DAM streamlines workflows and establishes one centralized “source of truth” for digital assets.  

Outside of accessing and using files, digital asset management can include tracking, reporting, and analyzing the use of assets. Brands use this data to decipher which assets are used most often so they can recreate success in the future. It also ensures they remain legally compliant with usage rights.  

What Does “DAM” Mean?

1. What does “Digital” mean?

Digital is the most straightforward of the DAM definitions. When you think of the word “digital”, what do you think of? Most likely your mind goes to computers and TV screens and iPhones, and this isn’t too far off base when it comes to what the “digital” in “digital asset management” refers to. Your organization likely creates a ton of content in a ton of different ways. You likely have creative files, documents, pictures, videos, and print materials in some form.

All the content that can be stored on a computer would fall under the “digital” label because it would be made up of what’s called “binary data”, which is a fancy way of saying it is composed of data that a computer can see and understand. Much like our eyes need light to make out shapes and colors, computers need binary data to do the same.

What does this tell us about the meaning of “digital asset management” or “DAM”? DAM deals with all the content that can be stored on your computer or hard drive, not your file cabinet.

2. What is an “Asset”?

The next question in our journey to define DAM is, “What’s an asset?” We know that the assets involved in DAM are in digital formats, but there are a few other qualifiers to narrow down this definition and provide a clearer picture of what DAM is.

Let’s go through the same exercise we did when defining “digital”. When you hear the term “asset”, what do you think of? That question may conjure thoughts of balance sheets or bank statements, or finance classes from college. Sorry for that, but it isn’t far off. Assets are simply items with intrinsic value. They are worth something to you and others, often because they can be used to generate value in other ways.

Combining these first two definitions tells us exactly what digital assets are. They are digital, meaning they can be stored on a computer, and they are assets, meaning they generate value for you and your business. Not every piece of digital content your organization creates is valuable, and some are more valuable than others.

3. How do I “Manage” assets?

Differentiating and organizing these digital assets based on their value to the business and the way that they generate that value is where the “M” in DAM comes in. The management component is the most important in providing a clear definition of digital asset management. It is where the tools, standards, and processes involved in the utilization of digital assets come into play.

While there are a lot of tools and standards, and processes we could expand on at length, below are just a few that we think are some of the most important.

• DAM Systems – Technology allows for the management of a high volume of assets using simple or complex workflows. DAM systems come in many shapes and sizes, from on-premise servers to high-end, cloud-based, dedicated digital asset management software purchased from vendors.
• Permissions – Defining who has the ability to access, edit, delete, share, and move files within a digital asset library. Permissions keep your digital assets safe and secure and insulate your organization from the risk of assets of lesser value making their way into the wrong hands.‍
• Metadata – Data about your data – keywords, captions, locations, photographer name, and more. Metadata makes assets searchable and filterable within many DAM systems, making them easier to find and use.

What Are DAM Assets?

DAM assets are different types of digital media and data files that organizations create, use, access, and manage to support and further their business goals. The collection of files an organization possesses is called its asset library, and it’s the foundation of DAM. 

Here are some of the most common DAM assets:

The term “digital assets” also refers to blockchain-based assets like cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), tokenized assets, and other types of similar technology. Digital asset management does not incorporate these types of assets

The Core Values of DAM 

The meaning of digital asset management boils down to three core values: process, understanding, and scale. 

• Process: Implementing clearly understood organizational standards and processes is the key to creating easily maintained digital libraries, regardless of the size and complexity of the platform.
• Understanding: Establishing standards and processes for managing how assets are tagged, named, organized, uploaded, and shared allows team members across departments to have an equal understanding of your library.
• Scale: The end goal for every business or organization, year after year, is to grow. DAM provides a place for future assets to live and standards that will outlive the tenure of staff and organizational pivots.

What Does DAM Do?: Essential Functions & Capabilities of Digital Asset Management

Digital asset management comprises multiple functions and capabilities that take you through the entire process, from creation to archiving. 

Some essential functions and capabilities of DAM include: 

• Central repository for managing digital assets
• Search functionality
• Metadata management
• Workflows & collaboration tools
• Version control & asset history
• Content optimization tools
• Security & legal compliance
• Asset distribution
• Integrations
• Brand consistency & control
• Reporting and analytics

Central Repository for Managing Digital Assets

The most important function of DAM is to serve as the central repository for managing digital assets. DAM software specializes in storing large quantities of assets, so you can host all of your organization's files in one centralized location. 

Establishing a DAM process for your organization enables you to store brand assets, media, corporate documents, and other important assets in one place. Your team doesn’t have to surf through old emails, bounce between different cloud storage folders and physical hard drives, bug other teammates, or recreate assets they can’t locate. 

Organization is key for uploading, storing, accessing, and transferring assets. DAM organizes assets by date, metadata tags, file type, or other categorization, so anyone can find what they’re looking for without having to remember where it’s stored or how to locate it. 

Self-service is a crucial feature of your DAM, as it allows anyone to retrieve what they need at any time without having to request access. Other important capabilities include: 

• Bulk uploads and migration
• Upload links to ingest content from external stakeholders 

Search Functionality 

Another key component of DAM is search functionality. An efficient DAM has robust, extensive searching features so users can locate files quickly and easily. 

One of the most common ways to find what you’re looking for is metadata search and filtering. Metadata provides detailed information about an asset. By using metadata search for specific terms, DAMs filter for the most relevant files. 

Some of the most useful DAM search functionality includes: 

• Custom search
• File type filters
• Image filters
• In-document search 

AI-powered visual search uses facial recognition to find specific images and videos, and is a useful capability to look for in a DAM. 

Metadata Management 

Metadata management is the backbone of an organized, easily accessible DAM. Because it’s the descriptive information associated with a file, metadata is often the easiest way to search for a specific asset you’re looking for. 

Auto-tagging generates certain fields of metadata upon uploading, cutting out a tedious manual task. Custom metadata allows your organization to capture specific marketing campaign information or any other unique information.

Optical character recognition (OCR) is another useful function of DAM that scans text from documents and PDFs to populate metadata. 

Workflows & Collaboration Tools

Digital asset management incorporates functions and capabilities to streamline workflows and maximize collaborative efforts. Automated, linear workflows streamline review and approval, returning precious time and effort back to more important tasks. Fewer touchpoints and faster approval help push assets live in less time, eliminating bottlenecks of traditional approval workflows. 

Some DAMs have digital workspaces where users can collaborate on specific assets and projects in a dedicated space. Commenting and annotations are essential features that allow all stakeholders to communicate and leave feedback in real-time. Virtual collaboration cuts back on unnecessary back and forth over minor changes. 

Version Control & Asset History 

Version control is a DAM function that layers new versions of assets in one file. This reduces storage requirements and ensures files are always updated, but allows you to access old versions instead of hosting a different file for each version. 

Asset history provides tracking data and ensures the right version is being used. It also documents who made changes to an asset and when. Together, version control and asset history reduce clutter in your DAM process.

Content Optimization Tools

Part of digital asset management is optimizing the content creation process. Some DAM capabilities take the burden off creative teams and designers, as well as marketers and anyone else using the same asset in multiple formats. Reusing and optimizing content for each use case multiplies your output without having to invest in creating new content.  

Within a DAM, you can convert images, videos, audio, and different types of files into other formats. If you want to take an MP4 video file and convert it into an audio-only MP3 file, conversion capabilities within your DAM make that possible. 

Conversion functionality goes one step further with the ability to set up templated conversions for social media posts, slide decks, banners, and webpages. It allows you to crop and resize as needed without uploading new files.

Security & Legal Compliance 

Your brand’s digital assets are valuable, sensitive materials and, since they’re shared between internal and external stakeholders, need to be protected. DAM prioritizes security and legal compliance for every asset. 

User permissions ensure only the right people have access to certain assets. This capability allows you to set specific limitations and restrictions for different user types to prevent unauthorized access or modifications. 

• For example, a lower-level marketing associate may have their user permissions set to only allow for downloading approved assets. 

Digital rights management (DRM) tools keep your bases covered when it comes to legal compliance. They track and manage the usage of any assets that are licensed or copyrighted, mitigating any risks of rights-related disputes and ensuring adherence to copyright and licensing regulations. 

Aim to find DAM software that encrypts all of your assets. This is standard in most modern options, but some older ones don’t offer encryption. 

Asset Distribution 

Distributing assets, and the approval process that coincides, is a common roadblock that effective DAM solves. Customizable approval statuses can trigger content distribution to teams and platforms in one click. 

Password-protected share links help protect assets as they’re distributed between internal and external stakeholders. 

DAMs have protections and safeguards, allowing you to set expiration dates for when an asset becomes outdated. This removes outdated content on the day its expiration date is set to. Content delivery network (CDN) links and layered asset versioning keep embedded assets updated without having to manually make changes. 

Integrations

Integrations connect your DAM software to other technologies to maximize efficiency. Some of the most useful integrations are: 

• Content management system (CMS)
• Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
• Marketing resource management (MRM) systems
• Product information systems (PIMs)
• Design and creative tools
• Project management systems
• Social media platforms
• Third-party distribution services
• Other marketing automation solutions

Also consider application programming interfaces (APIs) that can create custom DAM integrations outside of those included. 

Brand Consistency & Control

The functions and capabilities of DAM systems keep brand identity and consistency a central focus. Branded, customizable portals create an experience tailored to your organization’s identity. 

DAMs can host brand style guides that all team members can access and refer to when creating any piece of content. Click-on agreements ensure users follow the terms of your style guide. Brand templates make it even easier to create branded content, with user-friendly, pre-designed files available as a starting point. 

Brand approval workflows complete the process, making sure that every asset approved for distribution is on-brand. A consistent, controlled brand allows you to tell your story the way you envision. 

Reporting & Analytics

Once assets are distributed and live, reporting and analytics tie it all together. Reporting features help organizations understand the performance of their content and inform data-driven strategies. 

Site and asset-level analytics can show which assets are used most often and performing best, helping to inform future content creation to replicate the success. They can also identify the least used, poor-performing assets that can be removed and might not be worth replicating in the future. 

3 Questions Digital Asset Management Attempts to Answer

1. Where Do Our Digital Assets Live?

You and your team must figure out the best way to store your files in order to make accessing and searching for them as simple for your organization as possible. Here are some things to consider:

• Should my files be stored locally or on the cloud?
• How should assets be organized within my library?
• Is a DAM platform right for my organization?
• If so, what are our required features for a DAM platform?
• What is our budget for a DAM platform?

2. How Do I Find Our Digital Assets?

Once you have determined the location of your files, you’ll want to determine the process for easily searching them. Organizing your assets intuitively and educating your team on how to locate them is key to streamlining your workflow. Here are a few questions to consider:

• What kind of folder structure is right for our team?
• How should our files be named?
• What kind of keywords should we apply to our assets?

3. Who Has Access to Our Digital Assets?

The final major consideration in the digital asset management process is ensuring your files are secure. Deciding who can access, share, and edit your files is vital to maintaining the integrity of your brand. Below are the specific questions to answer to make sure your assets are safe:

• Can contributors outside your organization have access to your library?
• What is the process of sharing assets across or outside of your organization?
• Should sections of your folder structure be password-protected?
• What kinds of copyright, licensing, and usage permissions are attached to your assets?

How Does Digital Asset Management Work?

With so many stakeholders and functions, establishing a DAM process may seem overwhelming. It’s not as difficult as you think!

While there are countless customizations and use cases depending on your needs, an efficient digital asset management process involves the following steps: 

• Create
• Tag & Name
• Organize
• Upload
• Search
• Secure
• Share
• Archive

Create

Assets are created by your talented team or a freelancer, who then gets started adding them to the DAM system for use.

Tag & Name

Those assets are renamed and enriched with metadata to make them searchable.

Organize

Assets are organized according to file name, allowing the creator to easily upload to the right place.

Upload

Valuable assets find their way into their new home: a scalable, straightforward folder structure that fits your workflow.

Search

As your team works, they search the DAM using keywords pulled straight from the words your organization uses.

Secure

Users are given clear and specific permissions to see only what they need, and assets are retired as their copyright permissions expire.

Share

Your team securely shares content with each other, clients, partners, and, most importantly, consumers.

Archive

Assets with outdated branding, historical significance, or resale value are placed in an organized archive to reduce the clutter of the DAM system.

Benefits of DAM

Organizations benefit from DAM in many ways, including: 

• Efficiency and accessibility
• Productivity
• Collaboration
• Security
• Brand consistency and relevance
• Legal compliance and governance
• Integrations
• Analytics and reporting
• Reduced costs
• Increased conversion and customer retention 

Efficiency and Accessibility

Organizing assets in a centralized location makes it easier to locate and access them, thereby improving the efficiency of all teams that rely on them to perform critical tasks. DAM creates one “single source of truth” that eliminates siloed teams and ensures the right people have access to the right assets when they need them. 

Cloud-based solutions provide 24/7 self-service access to all digital content, centralized in one place. That makes it easier for internal and external stakeholders to find what they’re looking for faster. 

Sharing password-protected links from the same centralized platform simplifies and expedites delivery to internal and external stakeholders. The ability to locate and use assets without having to manually request and be granted access speeds up the process, creating efficiencies that save wasted time and money. 

Productivity

Improved productivity is another benefit that’s directly attributed to efficiency and accessibility. Easy access to the right assets reduces the time and effort of your team, subsequently increasing productivity. 

A major productivity-boosting benefit of DAM is automation. Automating tasks like cropping, metadata tagging, approvals, and content distribution saves time that can be used for more productive means. 

Collaboration 

DAM brings all of your teams together, enhancing and promoting collaboration. Multiple users can access and work with assets simultaneously. Since various stakeholders across projects can view creative assets, they can work together throughout the process to ensure the right message comes across. 

Certain capabilities, like digital workspaces, allow users to actively collaborate on the creative process in real-time. On a smaller, more common scale, comments and annotations allow stakeholders to leave feedback and collaborate in real-time.  

Increased collaboration across stakeholders introduces more impactful workstreams by eliminating redundant tasks.

Security 

Secure file storage and sharing are some of the most important benefits DAM offers. At the highest level, DAM provides safe, secure storage in one location. 

Encryption and automatic backups to secure locations protect your assets and data. This reduces files getting lost from using external hard drives, desktops, flash drives, or other storage methods. 

Control of access rights and user permissions creates different experiences and abilities based on roles or position levels. These settings ensure that only the right people can access, approve, download, or distribute certain assets. 

Additional security measures allow you to control how assets are used after they’re shared, set expiration dates, and track sharing history across the entire organization. 

Brand Consistency and Relevance 

Digital asset management aims to keep every facet of your organization’s messaging on-brand. Standardizing how your company talks about, organizes, names, tags, and looks for assets ensures that searches bring the desired result, branding stays consistent, and permissions are followed. 

DAM creates consistency in the use of all digital assets. It helps organizations maintain a consistent brand identity and image with their messaging across all channels. Multiple teams and departments reuse assets to be more efficient, presenting cohesive, consistent messaging that’s aligned with the brand’s identity. 

Expiration dates ensure only relevant images are used. It eliminates the risk of outdated assets being used, with the ability to update assets after uploading. CDN links and layered asset versioning updates embedded assets automatically, so there’s never an irrelevant version available to the public. 

Legal Compliance and Governance 

Various DAM tools help organizations remain compliant with copyright and other legal requirements. 

Hosting licenses, legal documentation, archives, and other assets ensure legal and regulatory compliance. This protects organizations from potential legal issues that take away from productivity and cost resources to deal with. 

Integrations 

DAM platforms with integration capabilities connect your tech stack. From CMS and PIM to design and social media tools, your team has fewer applications and platforms to think about. 

If your DAM integrates with Adobe Creative Suite and your content management system, you’re able to streamline the asset lifecycle in one location. This creates a more efficient flow of your organization’s digital assets. 

Analytics and Reporting 

Analytics and reporting functions in DAM software provide an overview of how assets are used. Tracking and reporting on asset usage helps identify which assets are used most effectively and which are being underutilized. 

These capabilities also help inform what types of content are most useful and replicate that formula for success. Identifying content that isn’t useful can pinpoint which assets to expire and remove, with no plans of replicating. 

Overall, analytics and reporting help optimize the use of digital assets and develop a more effective use of resources. 

Reduced Costs

The bottom line is the most important metric to a business's key stakeholders. Cutting costs means more profit and success for the organization as a whole. 

DAM reduces costs in multiple ways:

• Centralized assets are easier to find and reuse, saving on production costs and cutting duplicate workflows
• Automation eliminates redundant, tedious tasks, saving time and money
• Faster creation, retrieval, storage, and distribution of content improves ROI for all branding and marketing efforts 

Creating standards, processes, and workflows that put existing assets to work across the company maximizes their value and lifespan. You don’t have to waste time scouring through duplicate files or paying to recreate assets that have gone missing, reducing costs in the process.

Reduced costs allow you to allocate that budget to other areas of the organization, and the efficiency of DAM helps bring assets to the market faster. 

Increased Conversion and Customer Retention 

Increased conversion and customer retention pair well with reduced cost. More loyal customers and fewer costs equate to a more successful business. 

With digital asset management, organizing assets by stages of the buyer’s journey helps organizations serve on-brand content and marketing materials to target audiences at the right time. It helps create a personalized experience for customers and builds stronger, lasting relationships. This also pushes existing customers through the buying cycle faster and more efficiently. 

Who Uses Digital Asset Management?

DAM users vary depending on the organization, industry, size, and other factors. Both internal and external stakeholders may use DAM within the same project. Businesses that work with external users utilize DAM to establish file permissions, track changes and annotations, and control the use of specific assets

Here are some of the most common teams that use DAM: 

• Marketing and sales
• Designers and creative teams
• Developers and information technology (IT)
• Legal
• External stakeholders (Partners, contractors, freelancers, clients, and agencies)

Marketing and Sales

Marketing and sales teams leverage digital asset management to simplify the process of generating, storing, accessing, and using assets for marketing materials, advertising campaigns, sales pitches, and more. 

DAM makes collaboration between marketing and sales seamless, helping the teams share relevant assets to create sales presentations. Tracking how assets are used and who is using them helps organizations measure the effectiveness of their sales and marketing initiatives. 

Designers and Creative Teams

Designers and creative teams may use DAM more than any other department, uploading new content and accessing branded assets. DAM centralizes reviews and annotations, organizing all existing project files in one location. Within the same location, they can share finalized assets across all teams. 

Several built-in editing tools promote collaboration between designers and teams, including: 

• Version control
• Shared resources
• Digital workspaces 

One of the greatest benefits for design and creative teams is integration with project management and design tools like Adobe Creative Suite. This allows them to complete the entire process, from creating assets to sharing, on one platform. 

Developers and Information Technology (IT) 

Developers and IT lean on DAM for assets related to the development, maintenance, and deployment of software and websites, as well as other digital products (depending on the industry). 

DAM provides a streamlined path for accessing assets and asset data. Users can store code snippets and file libraries that can be reused to make new projects more efficient. APIs and SDKs within a DAM integrate critical systems, allowing developers and IT professionals to bounce between applications less often. 

Legal 

Legal teams depend on DAM to upload, organize, store, and access digital assets related to legal proceedings and negotiations. This can include documents, contracts, legal briefs, and other files. 

DAM makes it easier for legal professionals to collaborate and share documents. It also helps all teams of an organization ensure compliance with rules and regulations related to assets, which removes a burden from legal teams. 

External Stakeholders (Partners, Contractors, Freelancers, Clients, and Agencies) 

External stakeholders, including partners, contractors, and freelancers, benefit from DAM. It enables collaborations between clients and third parties to develop products, strategize marketing campaigns and services, and implement them more effectively. 

Agencies can easily store, share, access, and edit assets through a DAM. They can also submit files for review or approval. 

Clients access digital assets for projects or services. For example, professional photographers use DAMs to share images with clients who use them for various purposes. 

User permissions and access controls allow you to set restrictions on what assets external stakeholders can access and alter.

What Is DAM Used For?

There are many use cases for DAM, including general management of all digital assets for a business. 

Some specialized and specific ways that DAM is used include:  

• Brand management
• Sales enablement
• Creative asset management
• Marketing asset management
• Video asset management
• Commerce asset management
• Enterprise asset management 

Brand Management 

DAM provides a central repository to store and manage brand resources. Hosting style guides and templates, DAM enhances brand management by ensuring that team members and external stakeholders remain consistent with messaging and imagery. 

Creative and content teams run most of the show when using DAM for brand management. They handle the ideation and creation of assets, overseeing brand identity and monitoring asset use. DAM empowers all departments of an organization to remain on-brand during marketing and advertising campaigns, as well as sales and other phases of business. 

Sales Enablement 

Sales enablement is a collaborative effort between the marketing and sales teams. A DAM maximizes the potential for collaboration between the two, combining a mix of marketing materials and sales enablement content. 

It removes all bottlenecks, allowing both sides to efficiently access and distribute content. By hosting it all in one spot, DAM ensures the sales team uses content that marketing creates to support their deals.

Creative Asset Management 

DAM establishes a precise, effective process to manage creative assets. Integrations with creative tools like Adobe Creative Suite streamline the process from start to finish, all in one location. 

This allows creative teams to spend more time creating and less time searching for assets, switching between applications, uploading files, and getting bogged down by the process.

Marketing Asset Management 

Managing marketing assets is simplified with DAM. It allows marketing teams to use content more strategically. Automation features expedite content organization, and AI visual search features help marketers find what they’re looking for faster. 

Pre-approved brand templates, optimization tools, and style guides keep all materials on-brand, no matter who creates them. A DAM helps marketers deliver quality content across all of their organization’s channels.  

Video Asset Management

Video assets are valuable to organizations in the modern technological landscape, especially with the prominence of short-form content. DAM assists teams with the creation, storage, sharing, and distribution of video assets. It allows you to access and edit video footage, reels and shorts, and other post-production work in a centralized library. 

DAM is a one-stop shop to access, track, and use video content. 

Commerce Asset Management 

eCommerce assets have two purposes for consumers. They use it to either: 

• Purchase directly from digital channels, or
• Conduct research before going to the physical location. 

That means managing eCommerce assets is essential if you’re selling products, goods, and/or services. PIM integrations make DAM even more valuable to organizations that rely on eCommerce. 

Enterprise Asset Management 

Large organizations have robust content libraries. Sometimes it expands across multiple sub-brands. These organizations rely on DAM to effectively manage and distribute content to numerous teams and channels. 

How Do You Know If Your Organization Needs DAM?

For those organizations without a DAM program, it’s likely that it’s already time to implement digital asset management. In its most basic form, this simply means having a system and tool in place to organize and secure assets, making them more accessible to the right teams. 

There are a few signs and scenarios that indicate your organization would benefit from implementing a DAM process, including: 

• You have a large volume of digital assets
• Multiple teams handle your assets
• Your industry regulations are not up to date
• Your workflows are inefficient
• Maintaining brand consistency is challenging 

You Have A Large Volume of Diverse Digital Assets

A large volume and diversity of assets puts strains not only on storage capabilities and organization/accessibility, but also on the people tasked with managing assets, creating and governing workflows, and ensuring that everything stays organized. 

If your organization does marketing of any kind, you’ve likely encountered a situation like this: 

• You're putting together a new webpage, social post, advertisement, or campaign graphic. You recall that a photoshoot was conducted earlier in the year, but since you weren’t involved, you have no idea where the photos are stored. You reach out to several co-workers for assistance, hoping to avoid relying on AI, stock imagery, or whatever is on your computer, but no one can help you. 

Now, imagine this issue across dozens of teams, time zones, departments, and marketing initiatives. Without a centralized system, employees waste valuable time searching for assets they know exist but can’t find. Even organizations with a well-established DAM program can encounter challenges as the types of assets they manage and the channels they use become more complex. 

If you find yourself struggling to keep up with a growing library of digital assets, it might be a sign that you need to establish, reevaluate, or enhance your DAM program. 

Multiple Teams Handle Your Assets

When several departments use digital assets, coordinating their efforts can be challenging. Without a unified DAM solution, marketing, sales, and design teams may use different storage systems, leading to version control issues and inconsistent branding. 

A key factor to consider when evaluating changes to the way you manage creative assets is identifying who your end users are. How many different places are assets coming from or going to? Different teams require distinct workflows, metadata, and capabilities. 

Simple problems require simple solutions, but as the needs of your users become more layered and complex, the capabilities of your storage solution must also scale. This isn't necessarily a one-to-one relationship; while creating an intuitive, dynamic, and simple experience for users is critical, it's equally important to address complexity when it arises. 

Implementing a DAM solution centralizes assets in a logically organized, easily accessible repository for your entire organization. Along with attention from staff dedicated to the DAM program and additional, custom training resources, DAM makes it easier for multiple teams to get the most out of your asset library.  

Your Industry Regulations Are Not Up to Date

Certain industries face strict compliance requirements for data management and security. As regulations change, your processes and (potentially) your platform must as well. It can be difficult to keep tabs on which regulations relate to your company and what changes may impact the way you organize and secure digital assets.

A DAM system ensures that digital assets are stored, accessed, and distributed in accordance with current legal standards. This is particularly crucial for sectors like healthcare, finance, and government, where data breaches can result in severe penalties.

Your Workflows Are Inefficient

You likely have access to some degree of data regarding just how efficient your workflows are. Even if you don’t have concrete data, you should have a pulse on how your workflows operate and whether they work to further your overall business goals. 

If you’re consistently dealing with bottlenecks and roadblocks in your workflows, DAM can improve your process and lift the burden from your shoulders. DAM features and capabilities like effective search, collaboration tools, automation, and integration streamline and expedite workflows. 

Maintaining Brand Consistency is Challenging

Maintaining a consistent brand image across all marketing materials is challenging without proper asset management. 

If your organization has faced challenges keeping creative assets on-brand or ensuring archived assets are secure, implementing a defined DAM program is likely in your best interest. 

Improving your program could be as simple as accessing certain features of DAM platforms, but it may require hard work like updating rights information, archiving outdated content, and updating permissions hierarchies. 

DAM programs help prevent the use of outdated or unapproved assets by providing version control and ensuring that only the most current, on-brand materials are accessible to team members.

What Does DAM Look Like in Practice?

Implementing Digital Asset Management can be overwhelming. Here are some ways Stacks has helped our clients:

Determining a File Naming Convention

Having file names that make sense is one of the most effective ways to organize, search for, and locate your assets. A good file name can give your team a snapshot of the file’s origin, use, and relationship with other assets. For this reason, it is important to name all files in a standard way. See the following example for a solid standard for file naming:

‍

Applying Metadata to Assets

Once you have determined the type of metadata you need and how to organize it on your assets, you will want to develop a plan for applying that metadata to your assets. For example, the Stacks team applied metadata to digital assets for the Baltimore Ravens by first creating a Master Keyword List using the Ravens’ internal language and then applying those keywords to their assets:

‍

Creating a Folder Structure

“A place for everything and everything in its place.” This is the simple idea behind building an intuitive folder structure based on the workflow and language of your business. With this kind of organizational standard in place, your library becomes scalable, easy to navigate, and directs users to the assets they are looking for without using a search bar. Here is an example of a high-level folder structure built by Stacks:

‍

3 Real-World Digital Asset Management (DAM) Examples 

It’s often helpful to take concepts that are complex or elaborate and ground them in real-world stories of people like us overcoming similar challenges by implementing those concepts. In this section of the guide, we provide three stories of brands and their employees struggling with digital asset management (DAM) and how they overcame those challenges.

The Baltimore Ravens: Capitalizing on an MVP Season

In today’s world, generating excellent and engaging creative content and delivering it to the consumer quickly is a must for any effective brand. The same is true of the Baltimore Ravens. 

By deploying team photographers to home and away games, the Ravens were generating hundreds to thousands of beautiful and exciting photos to capture consumers’ attention after each game. The only problem: these assets were hard to find after they had been uploaded to their digital asset management (DAM) platform.

Erin Disney, the Digital Media Manager at the Ravens, said this about their struggles with DAM: "With an increase in the number of visual assets being produced, we fell behind on keywording game photos for the 2019 season.”

The Ravens were already using Photoshelter as their DAM platform, but they needed help creating processes to make the platform work for their team’s needs. With this in mind, Stacks sat down with the Ravens and helped them develop metadata taxonomies, file naming conventions, and other DAM standards.

The results? A simple, yet effective set of standards and processes that could revolutionize the way they searched and organized game photographs. All these were created, formalized, and delivered by Stacks to the Ravens in a clean and simple Best Practice Guide that could quickly be shared with new members of the team or referenced when team members had questions.

Once these standards were created, Stacks got to work applying them to the Ravens’ backlog of photos already living in the DAM, as well as any incoming assets from games that were played that week, with a 24-hour turnaround time. In total, the Stacks team enriched the metadata and file names of over 14,000 assets from the 2019-2020 preseason, regular season, and playoffs.

According to Erin, “In less than a month, Stacks was able to get us caught up on the full season, greatly improving the speed at which assets can be located. Player, coach, and sponsor photos are now easy to search and find for any user in the organization."

Read more about how the Ravens build a sustainable DAM program to drive digital success off the field.

MANSCAPED: Facilitating Sustainable Growth

From the beginning, MANSCAPED made its name marketing to Millennials and Gen Z on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with funny ads around male grooming. This marketing strategy helped MANSCAPED grow internationally and steadily increase its revenues, becoming a widely known brand in just a few years. 

As the company grew, creative services and marketing teams struggled to keep track of the sheer volume of content accumulating in the company's servers and Dropbox accounts. Up to date, on-brand content became difficult to find and share with colleagues quickly. This looming problem threatened to stunt the continued growth of the business.

Without anyone on their team with digital asset management (DAM) experience, the task of achieving these objectives seemed overwhelming. Due to the responsibilities required to keep the business running day-to-day, Lizzie Correia, MANSCAPED’s newly hired Creative Services Project Manager, knew a more experienced person could help them prioritize and execute their efforts. She decided to hire Stacks to meet their needs, and after some initial meetings to understand MANSCAPED's needs, Stacks got to work making DAM easy for Lizzie and her team.

Lizzie said, "Stacks was the only agency that understood our needs. They narrowed down hundreds of DAMs to 2-3 options, which would have taken us months to do. Their team was integral in helping us make a case for pulling the trigger on purchasing the DAM. And now, they continue to help us manage our assets on an ongoing basis. It doesn't hurt that we dig the team as people, too. They’re down-to-earth, friendly, and super accessible."

After gaining a deeper understanding of the team's DAM workflows, the Stacks team used their vast network and experience in the DAM space to connect MANSCAPED with several platforms that met both their needs and budget. After choosing a platform, Stacks handled the work of populating the DAM with content, applying standards, and managing the system. At the same time, Lizzie and her team got up and running, creating more content and continuing to connect with consumers.

Read more about how MANSCAPED is managing and using content to grow its brand

KIND Snacks: Enabling Successful Brand Management through DAM

With up to 15 unique product lines featuring several flavors and hundreds of unique ingredients, KIND Snacks generates tremendous amounts of creative content from packaging design files to marketing materials.

While the brand succeeded, KIND was finding they had a problem: they had nowhere to store, sort, and access all the creative assets they were creating. They needed a space to house all their creative content that had been so integral to the company’s success, so that it could be accessed, searched for, found, shared, and downloaded simply and securely.

The Stacks team knew from experience that a DAM platform itself would not solve the issues that KIND was facing. In order to effectively implement a new platform and maintain it, standards had to be created and goals for the new platform set. 

Together with a set of key stakeholders from KIND, the team identified 4 key standards to establish:

• A future-focused folder structure that used internal language. This would allow for seamless navigation of the DAM and natural growth on the platform for years to come.
• A controlled internal vocabulary for metadata tagging and searches. These came in the form of a master keyword list of 110 keywords that was segmented by product, ingredients, packaging, product description, and nutrition facts.
• A file naming convention that would allow for straightforward organization within the folder structure and a more effective search function.
• A clearly-defined permissions tree to keep important assets and the brand as a whole safe from breach.

Once these standards were created and key objectives for the DAM identified, the Stacks team got to work applying keywords, renaming files, and building out KIND’s folder structure in the DAM. In all, the Stacks team curated nearly 3,000 unique design assets in a matter of weeks, and quickly began uploading assets to the freshly created folder structure.

KIND’s Social Media Coordinator, Blair Hirak, had this to say about their experience with Stacks: “Quick and painless experience to migrate a TON of digital and design assets (all while entering a completely remote work environment due to the pandemic). It would have been a nightmare to navigate asset accessibility in a remote world if Stacks hadn’t helped us get up and running on PhotoShelter in this very efficient, quick, and timely manner!”

‍Read more about how KIND benefitted from having its DAM program in place before the market changed due to COVID-19

Establish Your Digital Asset Management (DAM) Program with Stacks!

This guide incorporates a wide range of information to provide a high-level overview of digital asset management. Of course, one resource isn’t enough to understand the process inside and out. 

At the very least, DAM is the process of creating, uploading, managing, and distributing all of an organization’s digital assets in one place. DAM has many functions and capabilities, and is used by a wide range of team members within and outside of an organization. 

If your organization is struggling to maintain an asset library, or you waste too much time searching for assets and waiting for approvals, Stacks can help. To learn more about digital asset management and how Stacks can improve your results, contact us today!