Many entrepreneurs make the change to advertising asset administration software program — broadly referred to as digital asset administration (DAM) software program — as soon as it turns into too tough to handle model belongings in cloud-based storage instruments like Google Drive or DropBox. After you accumulate many model belongings, these storage options get messy; groups have bother discovering the best digital information they want and waste time weeding by out-dated asset variations amongst different points. In the end, advertising groups find yourself struggling to trace how and the place belongings are shared and used.

However advertising asset administration and DAM software program does greater than enhance asset group: It helps advertising groups function extra effectively and strategically. With Brandfolder’s advertising asset administration instruments, you enhance collaboration in plenty of methods:

• Host web site and electronic mail content material from one software program so when these belongings are up to date, the present variations are robotically pushed in every single place on-line and branded supplies keep constant
• Entry pre-approved model belongings and templates so that you don’t have to attend for approval from creatives and may get your campaigns reside sooner
• Monitor efficiency metrics to know what belongings are used and engaged with probably the most, and supply course for future campaigns and/or justification to your work

On this submit, we stroll by advertising asset administration in Brandfolder and talk about how our suite of instruments streamline key duties to your advertising groups. On the finish, we’ll additionally assessment 5 different DAM platforms so you will discover the most effective digital asset administration software program to your total group.

Keen on studying extra about Brandfolder’s options for entrepreneurs? Get in contact with our workforce for a free demo of Brandfolder! We’ll stroll you thru our digital asset administration system so you may see how straightforward our software program is to make use of and determine if we’re the most effective resolution to your advertising groups.

Advertising Asset Administration in Brandfolder

One of many greatest advantages of switching to a digital asset administration software is the flexibility to accommodate all branded digital media in a single highly-searchable repository; that is extraordinarily handy and a time-saver for creatives, but it surely additionally advantages everyone else who must entry and use these branded belongings — corresponding to gross sales groups and entrepreneurs.

Learn on or skip forward with this overview of what you are able to do with Brandfolder:

– Set up belongings in Brandfolders, Collections, and Portals – Search your total asset library in seconds – Entry and customise pre-approved inDesign templates – Collaborate with different workforce members on updating belongings and bettering model management – Share belongings with friends and stakeholders with permissions and customized share hyperlinks – Energy your web site and electronic mail advertising content material from Brandfolder – View efficiency experiences to trace what number of instances individuals have interaction along with your belongings – Convert asset file codecs and sizes on the fly – Sync Brandfolder along with your different advertising instruments

Asset Group: Brandfolders, Collections, Model Portals

In Brandfolder, you may arrange digital advertising belongings in Brandfolders, Collections, and Model Portals:

Brandfolders: Brandfolders enable groups to create devoted folders of belongings for the completely different manufacturers they handle (therefore the identify Model-folders). A variety of the companies we work with solely have one primary Brandfolder; nonetheless, advertising groups who handle a number of manufacturers or advertising companies who’ve many consumers benefit from the comfort of storing advertising supplies for various manufacturers/shoppers individually.

Collections and Model Portals assist advertising managers get extra slim with content material administration. By importing and organizing belongings in Collections and Model Portals, asset managers can be certain that the belongings completely different groups have entry to are probably the most related to their actions, corresponding to present campaigns or a selected area.

Collections: Collections reside inside Brandfolders and let you centralize media belongings by vertical or workforce. Some customers create Collections to coincide with every of their completely different advertising campaigns, however you may also create collections to arrange content material by asset sort, use circumstances, publishing channel, and extra. There’s actually no rule to how one can select to arrange your digital content material (however we’re at all times right here that can assist you design your digital asset library taxonomy).

Model Portals: Model Portals are particularly useful for multinational organizations since they permit admins and managers to consolidate and share belongings with world advertising groups. With Model Portals, world groups can pop into Brandfolder and immediately entry belongings particular to their present campaigns or area. Groups may also benefit from our multi-language performance to localize belongings and think about asset info or metadata of their most well-liked language.

No matter the place belongings are uploaded and arranged in Brandfolder, our system detects duplicate belongings and implements model management by retaining all asset variations in the identical place, together with change historical past and workforce feedback on that asset.

Brandfolder’s digital asset administration options provide you with extra confidence figuring out the branded supplies you will have entry to are already accredited and up-to-date. You will discover and use the advertising content material you want with out asking creatives for approvals or present variations. Entrepreneurs may also embody model pointers in every asset’s description so everyone is aware of methods to use the asset.

Sturdy Search Options

Brandfolder’s flat search construction allows you to shortly search all the asset library as a substitute of losing time looking assortment by assortment. You’ll be able to arrange belongings in no matter order or construction you like, however nonetheless use the principle search characteristic to scan your total library (and discover belongings in seconds).

The superior search characteristic of our Model Intelligence makes use of AI to acknowledge the precise content material of your belongings — i.e., surroundings or merchandise in photographs, video dialogue, fonts, colours, and so on. — so that you don’t have to recollect actual file names to search out what you want. You can too use Pins, Tags and Filters to slim down your search outcomes once you search broader phrases.

For instance, say your model runs annual Father’s Day gross sales and it is advisable discover this yr’s promo movies with the present gives: You’ll be able to sort “Father’s Day” into the search bar and discover all advertising supplies associated to your Father’s Day gross sales, add Filters to go looking by file varieties (e.g., wealthy media or movies) and add date to view which media information have been lately up to date.

Word: You’ll be able to create Filters and Pin related Tags relying in your wants and tailor our search options to your groups.

Customizable Templates

Brandfolder’s templating characteristic is a large bonus for entrepreneurs as a result of it provides advertising groups extra freedom with content material creation with out sacrificing model integrity. Plus, artistic groups find it irresistible as a result of they don’t need to spend time approving each single new advert you create.

With our templating software, creatives can design pre-approved templates in InDesign, import them on to Brandfolder, and management how every template could be up to date. That method, you will discover the templates you want, customise them whereas staying on-brand, and obtain or print the completed merchandise proper from Brandfolder (with out the necessity for one more approval course of).

This characteristic is further useful for artistic groups in world manufacturers as a result of it permits them to design templates from a single location and make these templates obtainable to their completely different advertising groups world wide. Then, entrepreneurs close to and much can entry these templates, customise them for his or her particular area and in numerous languages, and create distinctive content material for his or her advertising efforts. This implies the artistic workforce doesn’t essentially have to assist content material manufacturing for a whole world advertising workforce.

Collaborative Instruments & Model Management

We additionally present collaborative instruments so you may talk with different workforce members and creatives when there’s a want for an asset replace (as a substitute of messaging about updates exterior of Brandfolder).

When viewing any asset, you may click on into the Workflow tab and depart feedback proper on the asset degree. This permits entrepreneurs to 1) collaborate with others in real-time on how the asset ought to be up to date, 2) tag-in designers to make the updates, and three) obtain feedback again when the asset is able to use. Groups may also view the asset’s total remark and model historical past inside that very same Workflow tab so there’s by no means any confusion about which asset model to make use of.

Permissions & Customized Share Hyperlinks

Sharing digital belongings in Brandfolder is simple with permissions and customized share hyperlinks.

You’ll be able to share belongings with different workforce members by including them to the Brandfolder or Assortment of belongings you need to share. When a consumer is added to a Brandfolder or Assortment, they’ll have entry to all the present belongings in that Brandfolder or Assortment, and any new belongings which can be uploaded after they’ve been added. Customers can then view, obtain, or share these belongings themselves.

If you wish to share belongings with individuals exterior of your fast workforce or group — corresponding to retailers, distributors, or different exterior stakeholders — you may ship customized share hyperlinks.

You’ll be able to identify these hyperlinks, set expirations for them, restrict downloading and sharing of belongings, and even require customers to supply an electronic mail handle to view belongings (to raised monitor who’s accessing your belongings). Better of all? We offer our customers with limitless free visitor seats, so you may share belongings with whoever it is advisable and never fear about further charges.

*Purchasing Tip: When searching for enterprise digital asset administration software program, search for an answer that gives free visitor seats. (Like us!) Why? Many manufacturers cost further to share belongings with exterior customers, and since enterprise manufacturers usually need to share belongings with plenty of completely different stakeholders, these further charges can actually hike up the worth of the software program. *

CDN Hyperlinks & Model Administration

Entrepreneurs can energy all of their on-line and electronic mail content material straight by Brandfolder to automate asset updates and enhance model consistency.

Right here’s how this works:

Each asset is assigned a novel content material supply community (CDN) hyperlink so you may embed that asset throughout completely different on-line channels. You’ll be able to copy the CDN hyperlink when viewing the asset, after which paste that hyperlink on e-Commerce web sites and even inside electronic mail advertising campaigns. Then, if the asset is ever up to date on the Brandfolder degree, it’ll robotically replace in every single place that CDN hyperlink lives on-line.

Utilizing Brandfolder as a single supply of reality saves you hours (or, for bigger corporations, precise days of labor) combing again by your whole on-line content material to replace each occasion of that asset manually. It additionally means you’ll by no means have to fret about forgetting to replace a webpage or marketing campaign when your advertising collateral modifications.

One other plus to CDN hyperlinks is that you may monitor the place the asset lives on-line and obtain higher insights and analytics concerning how individuals are participating with it.

Insights & Analytics

You will discover utilization metrics like engagement numbers for each asset you host through Brandfolder and use that info to enhance advertising methods. See what number of instances an asset has been considered, downloaded, or shared, and what number of instances (and the place) an asset has been used on-line.

These particulars assist creatives and entrepreneurs gauge which belongings are performing nicely — and which of them flop — to allow them to construct higher campaigns.

Handy File Conversions

Any Brandfolder consumer can convert belongings to completely different file codecs and sizes — to swimsuit completely different on-line platforms and social media channels — when downloading belongings from Brandfolder. Simply choose the parameters you need and Brandfolder makes the change for you.

Constructed-in file conversions imply you don’t need to spend time hopping into one other software to get completely different sizes and codecs of the identical file, plus it means you’ll at all times have easy accessibility to the complete decision, prime quality unique that every one your campaigns are primarily based on.

Entrepreneurs want greater than only a digital asset administration resolution to function effectively — you additionally use quite a lot of instruments to energy electronic mail newsletters, on-line weblog content material, social media campaigns, and extra. So we designed Brandfolder with quite a few integrations and an open supply API so groups can customise it to handle all the content material lifecycle in a single software program.

A few of the digital advertising software program, content material administration techniques, and undertaking administration instruments we combine with embody:

• Adobe Artistic Cloud
• MailChimp
• WordPress
• Contentful
• Marketo
• PrintUI
• Templafy
• SmartSheet

You’ll be able to learn extra about our integrations right here. However keep in mind, open supply APIs assist limitless customization, so in case you don’t see a sure software program on our record of out-of-the-box integrations, you may nonetheless arrange Brandfolder to sync with that software through the use of APIs.

The Runner-Ups: Different Prime-Rated DAMs for Advertising Asset Administration

Brandfolder has been voted the #1 top-rated digital asset administration platform on G2, a preferred software program assessment website. However as you store for advertising asset administration software program, you may also run into a few of these different DAM choices:

Bynder

Bynder is a really sturdy digital asset administration software program choice: It’s constructed with dozens of options to make organizing, discovering, and sharing belongings straightforward, and it integrates with many different software program. Bynder is just like Brandfolder by way of options, so in case you like Brandfolder, you may also like Bynder.

Nonetheless, critiques of Bynder say their DAM isn’t very straightforward to study or use and their buyer expertise workforce isn’t probably the most useful or immediate. Consequently, many groups, particularly enterprise corporations with tons of of customers, have bother adopting Bynder throughout their total group.

Canto

Canto is likely one of the solely SaaS DAM manufacturers that gives an on-premise model of their digital asset administration platform, so in case you want self-hosted DAM, then Canto is certainly price contemplating. Historically, Canto has been marketed as a DAM for small and medium-size companies as a result of it’s comparatively cheap and doesn’t have an excellent sturdy characteristic set. However in more moderen years, Canto has been updating their platform with extra options to enchantment to groups and companies of all sizes.

All in all, Canto’s platform is fairly straightforward to make use of, however some reviewers say the options are considerably primary and the interface is a bit of cluttered.

Widen Collective

Widen is marketed as an “enterprise digital asset administration and undertaking info administration software program,” however by its many options and performance, Widen additionally serves as a model administration and advertising useful resource administration software program. With that, Widen is an effective alternative for medium and huge companies who want all of this superior performance.

Although Widen has quite a lot of completely different options that could be useful for advertising groups, the software program could be expensive and is a bit of complicated to study. Should you don’t have a necessity for all the things Widen gives, it can save you your self time and headache by choosing a less complicated software program choice.

MediaValet

MediaValet is one other digital asset administration platform designed to cater to enterprise groups, and their platform is constructed with many options particularly for entrepreneurs and creatives. Should you’re a much bigger enterprise with a much bigger funds, MediaValet may be an excellent resolution to your advertising groups.

MediaValet’s DAM is the one DAM constructed on Microsoft Azure, and lots of reviewers say the software program is quick and intuitive. MediaValet gives quite a lot of add-ons and is customizable through integrations and an open supply API. That stated, some reviewers point out that MediaValet’s search perform and built-in reporting instruments could be glitchy and the software program’s interface is a bit of outdated.

IntelligenceBank

The final choice on our record, IntelligenceBank, gives quite a lot of software program for entrepreneurs, together with: Digital asset administration software program, model portal software program, advertising operations software program, advertising useful resource administration software program, and data administration software program. It will get fairly good buyer critiques and so they provide versatile pricing to enchantment to completely different workforce sizes.

Should you want an expansive advertising software program resolution, IntelligenceBank is definitely an excellent choice; however in case you don’t have a necessity for all of what IntelligenceBank offers, you’ll find yourself paying for options you don’t use. (The truth is, a number of critiques point out that IntelligenceBank is a bit of too sturdy and the additional complexity hikes up pricing and prolongs implementation.)

Get Began With a Free Demo

Brandfolder’s DAM system has quite a lot of instruments and integrations to make entrepreneurs’ lives extra handy, however we additionally constructed our software program resolution with user-friendly options to make life simpler for everyone in your group. We additionally perceive that transitioning from one storage resolution to a different could be difficult and time consuming, so we additionally present completely different tiers of onboarding and assist to assist with that total course of. (We will thank our devoted buyer expertise workforce for our 99% retention fee!)

To study extra about all of Brandfolder’s completely different options, obtain a free demo and pricing quote, and see how one can tailor our DAM resolution to fit your particular wants, request a free demo of Brandfolder as we speak.