If your brand operates an Amazon sales marketplace, you need a way to manage and track all of the digital assets of products you sell on Amazon. However, storing digital files in a cloud database doesn’t provide all your team’s solutions.
One of the best ways to organize, search, and find these creative files is with a digital asset management solution. In this article we’ll cover what Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions are and why your brand should use one.
What is a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution?
What is a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution or Digital Asset Managers (DAMs), and why is it vital for brand owners? A DAM solution is a software application that helps you centralize, find, store, and distribute your brand’s digital assets. It also allows you to track who is using these files and when.
What is a digital asset?
Before explaining the details of DAMs, it’s vital to understand digital assets. But what is a digital asset, and why are they essential for ecommerce brand owners?
Digital assets are any files related to your brand, including product images, marketing collateral, social media posts, etc. They are essential for online businesses because they help you build and promote your brand identity. Brands can use these assets across multiple channels, making them very versatile.
Who uses DAMs?
Several industries use DAMs. However, it’s compelling for retail brands and ecommerce companies.
These businesses need to manage many digital assets, including product images, marketing collateral, social media posts, etc.
What are the features & benefits of DAMs?
There are many ways in which a DAM can support your business, including:
- It helps you centralize all your brand’s digital assets in one place.
- It makes it easy to find and use suitable files when you need them.
- Reduces the risk of losing important files.
- Allows you to track who is using your files and when.
- It helps you distribute files quickly and efficiently to team members or other stakeholders.
- It makes it easy to share files with external partners or customers.
- Provides a secure way to store sensitive or confidential files.
- It helps you protect your intellectual property by ensuring that only authorized users access specific files.
As you can tell, DAM solutions provides a wealth of benefits for businesses that need to manage digital assets.
8 reasons to use DAMs
Now that you understand more about digital assets and DAMs, let’s see why your ecommerce team should use a DAM to manage future ecommerce properties.
1. Avoids costly mistakes
Losing digital assets, having an employee misplace an image or video, and other digital asset management disasters can cost a company dearly as they need to be re-shot, recreated or repurchased, or you need to scrap the campaign.
2. Maintains brand consistency
A DAM can help you maintain brand consistency by allowing you to share files with everyone on your team.
Sharing only approved content between collaborators is vital for ensuring that all materials reflect your company’s branding guidelines, tone, and message.
3. Reduces time spent searching for assets
DAM software helps reduce the time spent searching for files by organizing all your assets in one central location. Most feature digital asset management tools, such as search functions, making locating content easy.
It also provides features like tagging and file previews that make it easy to find the correct files quickly.
4. Ensures only authorized people have file access
One of the most significant advantages of using a digital asset management solution is that it provides security features to ensure that only authorized users have access to specific files.
Using security features is vital for protecting your company’s intellectual property and sensitive information. Plus, you can set permissions and user roles within your DAM to ensure that only authorized personnel has access to your brand’s sensitive information.
If you need to manage digital rights for your customers or partner businesses, digital asset management software can help you track who has what rights. Managing digital rights prevents legal issues and help prevent unauthorized use of your company’s intellectual property.
5. You can reuse and edit files quickly & easily
A digital asset management system makes it easy to reuse and edit files by providing features like version control and file previews. All DAMs work as content management systems that help marketing teams create better content.
Editing files in a DAM can save you time and effort when working on projects that require multiple versions of the same asset.
6. Improves communication & collaboration within your team
DAM software can improve communication and collaboration within your team by providing a central location for all your brand’s assets.
It also allows you to leave comments on files, which can help generate feedback from team members.
7. Facilitates file-sharing & collaborate with external partners
A DAM makes it easy to share files with external partners or customers by providing features like user permissions and file previews.
Sending assets from one central location can save you time and hassle when working on projects with people outside your company. It also works as version control, where you can ensure that everyone has access to and can collaborate on the same document.
8. Create custom campaigns
Some DAM software lets you publish directly to social media or create custom digital campaigns.
Posting marketing content directly from your DAM can help you save time and effort when promoting your brand online.
Having access to all the digital assets your brand owns and using it to create custom campaigns can be a game-changer for your marketing efforts.
Why DAMs are important for Amazon
Digital asset management is a critical part of ecommerce because your digital assets are your brand, and on Amazon you are just one of many brands within the marketplace, so your assets are your only way to differentiate. Your assets are your storefront, so they need to be on-brand, and up-to-date.
NOTE: If you only need to manage your ecommerce assets for Amazon, and not external campaigns, then a PIM (Product Information Management) system might be a more cost-effective tool to use.
Which DAMs are best for Amazon sellers?
Not every DAM will work for you as an Amazon Seller Central merchant. This is due to the nature of the assets and how Amazon requires assets to be uploaded.
Fortunately, brands with product listing digital assets can use FlatFilePro, a listing management software designed specifically for the Amazon marketplace.
FlatFilePro helps you store and manage your product data and images in one central location. You can also it to create professional-looking product listings, backup and restore product data, and make bulk listing changes. It is also much less costly than any commercial DAM (or PIM) system available.
Head over to our article on FlatFilePro and other options for managing Amazon listings.