Inventive asset administration entails extra than simply protecting a clear and arranged asset library. It additionally requires better management over the whole inventive workflow and content material lifecycle — assume planning inventive tasks, directing how others use property, and upholding a constant model picture pre- and post-publishing.

However the mistake many groups make is attempting to enhance inventive asset administration inside easy cloud storage drives like GDrive and Dropbox. Though we perceive the enchantment of those options — they provide simple methods to retailer and share digital information on-line — most inventive groups outgrow these cloud methods and expertise frustrations with:

• Disorganization from customers who go rogue and add, duplicate, or delete property within the library
• Outdated or incorrect asset variations floating across the asset library inflicting confusion and creating muddle
• Different groups misusing property — killing model consistency and creating clear up work for designers
• Losing many hours per week responding to asset requests from different crew members (who actually ought to know the place all the things is by now)
• Delayed tasks as a result of each deliverable requires a evaluate earlier than it will possibly obtain a inexperienced mild
• Miscommunications that come up when there are a number of open message threads about tasks and no person can keep on the identical web page
• The shortage of visibility on how others use property and no information on the success of these efforts to information future content material creation

Digital asset administration (DAM) software program is much better for groups that wish to enhance inventive asset administration as a result of they supply file storage and sharing like cloud storage options, however additionally they have quite a few different options to let designers:

• Management how others work together along with your model’s asset library, so anyone who wants to seek out and use model property can achieve this with out bugging creatives
• Energy new design tasks within the cloud, collaborate with others in real-time, and create new digital content material sooner
• Gauge the success of inventive collateral and strategically plan new inventive content material

So in our publish, we’ll discuss Brandfolder’s options to assist inventive groups function extra effectively. Particularly:

• Instruments to handle an organized asset library
• Instruments to handle how others use property
• Instruments to plan new content material & handle new design tasks
• Instruments to report on the success of inventive collateral

We designed Brandfolder and our onboarding course of so each crew receives a digital asset administration system tailor-made to their wants. We allow you to map out your asset library, join your DAM resolution along with your different instruments, and choose the suitable function set to help your whole customers. Get began with a free demo of Brandfolder!

Handle an Organized Asset Library

One of the primary, core advantages of digital asset administration software program is the power to maintain an organized, up-to-date asset library: In different phrases, DAMs allow you to retailer your whole model property in a single centralized location and have instruments to take care of group — at the same time as others work together along with your asset library and also you purchase an increasing number of digital content material.

This alone makes creatives’ jobs simpler as a result of they may give all people who wants to make use of model property — akin to gross sales and advertising and marketing groups, retailers, exterior collaborators, and stakeholders — entry to their DAM and know that they’re utilizing the suitable content material.

Brandfolder accepts all digital file sorts, together with photographs, fonts, coloration HEX codes, logos and different model graphics, Photoshop information and InDesign templates, wealthy media like audio and video property, GIFs and social media property, enterprise playing cards and different advertising and marketing supplies, and extra so you need to use our digital asset administration resolution to retailer your whole model information. This ensures your whole model property are in a single spot and no person has to go digging by way of a number of storage drives to seek out what they want.

Previous to shifting your whole property to Brandfolder, our buyer expertise crew helps you manage your asset library and gameplan the whole importing course of so that you don’t need to go at it alone. That is particularly useful for groups that don’t have a lot expertise mapping property and placing collectively a content material taxonomy, or groups which have hundreds upon hundreds of property to kind by way of. Better of all? After we plan out asset group and importing, we are able to program Brandfolder to mechanically ingest and manage all the things for you.

Then, as soon as property are moved over into Brandfolder, our DAM helps you to management who can contribute to your asset library so that you don’t have random customers dropping content material into your DAM. You can too select who can approve property so that you don’t have only one designer caught to sort out the opinions and approvals of recent/up to date property.

Brandfolder additionally has a replica asset detection function that analyzes all new asset uploads to verify customers aren’t importing a file that already exists within the DAM. If it catches a replica, it’ll immediate the person to cancel the add or merge the dupe with the prevailing file in Brandfolder.

For those who work with exterior inventive groups and freelancers for sure tasks, you need to use our visitor add hyperlinks to obtain property from exterior collaborators and monitor all of these uploads. Previous to producing and sending the visitor add hyperlink, you may management precisely the place every asset is uploaded in Brandfolder so that you don’t need to do any further organizing after the asset is obtained and accredited.

When you could replace current property in your Brandfolder library, you may collaborate with different creatives on the modifications proper within the asset’s overview. Brandfolder saves all collaborator feedback so anyone can pop in and stand up to hurry with out asking for an replace.

When you’re able to make edits, you may push property out of your library straight into their native modifying app, after which again to your asset library when edits are wrapped up (through integrations and Brandfolder’s open-source API). This streamlines the modifying course of and ensures you at all times have essentially the most present asset model in your library. We additionally report an in depth model historical past for all property so you may see the way it has been edited over time and entry previous variations.

When property are “checked out” for edits, Brandfolder alerts different customers by placing a banner over the asset and locking the obtain perform; this ensures no person by chance makes use of the mistaken asset and additional improves model management.

Handle How Others Use Property

Along with protecting an organized library, when searching for a DAM that’ll actually assist enhance inventive asset administration — or a DAM for designers — you additionally wish to take into consideration the options that’ll assist design groups handle how all people else makes use of their collateral.

First, Brandfolder’s sharing strategies allow you to dictate precisely how others can work together along with your property. There are two methods to share digital property in Brandfolder: You possibly can add teammates or different inner customers to property (or teams of property) with person permissions. Or you may ship property to exterior collaborators and stakeholders with a customized share hyperlink.

When sharing property through permissions, you may determine if customers can view, obtain, or edit an asset — however you may also get extra granular with person permissions. Then, any customers you share property with can are available and entry the content material they want with out submitting a request to a inventive or double-checking asset variations. When including customers to teams of property (i.e., Brandfolders, Collections, Model Portals), these customers may have entry to all current property and any new inventive content material that’s added. This makes it so creatives don’t need to share each single asset they add to Brandfolder — they’ll simply add it and go.

Customized share hyperlinks allow you to ship property to anyone, and we offer free limitless visitor seats so you are able to do as a lot sharing as wanted with out further charges. Because the title suggests, customized share hyperlinks are utterly customizable: You possibly can change the hyperlink title, add or take away property, set the hyperlink to run out, disable downloading for end-users, watermark property, and extra. You can too activate alerts to be notified anytime an end-user opens a share hyperlink or downloads one among your information inside, plus monitor all energetic share hyperlinks in a single dashboard. This offers you and your design crew complete oversight over the place your inventive information are distributed exterior of your group.

After property are shared, our highly effective search performance makes discovering the suitable inventive information simple for anyone, even when customers don’t know file names. Brandfolder’s search analyzes the content material of your property (i.e., colours, fonts, merchandise, background surroundings, dialogue, and many others.) to drag all the things associated to an finish person’s question. This manner, anyone can pop into Brandfolder, seek for the kind of collateral they want, and discover all the things the design crew has accessible for them.

Brandfolder can be constructed with a Brandguide function that enables creatives to retailer model tips proper within the DAM for different customers to reference. You may get as detailed in these model tips as you need — we’ve seen inventive groups write out step-by-step directions for downloading property, directions for posting inventive on totally different mediums, “issues to know” when modifying model templates, and extra. Posting model tips ensures that everyone who’s utilizing your property has the sources to make use of them precisely, and this makes it simpler for others to make the most of collateral and ensures model consistency throughout all tasks.

Along with Brandguide, Brandfolder additionally has a couple of different options that empower teammates to make use of property whereas guaranteeing model integrity, akin to templates, convert & resize, and customized & preset cropping.

• Templates: Our templating function lets creatives retailer pre-approved, on-brand templates for well-liked collateral like advertising and marketing property, gross sales decks, enterprise playing cards, e-mail signatures, and many others. so different customers can personalize these templates for his or her tasks and use instances. Creatives may even management precisely how finish customers modify these templates so no person ever goes off-brand.
• Convert & resize: The convert and resize device lets customers immediately change file format or file measurement earlier than downloading an asset from the platform.
• Customized & preset cropping: This function lets customers rapidly trim and crop their inventive information earlier than publishing or printing. Brandfolder offers presets for social media platforms like Twitter and Fb, and designers can create customized crops for any web site your groups publish content material on, akin to web sites, blogs, or e-mail advertising and marketing campaigns.

Brandfolder additionally makes publishing and printing property simpler through our built-in content material supply community (CDN) system and web-to-print performance.

With these instruments, groups can use Brandfolder as a single supply of reality and publish property throughout the online with a CDN hyperlink, or they’ll push property on to print with out the trouble of sending print requests. When publishing property with a CDN hyperlink, the printed asset continues to be powered by Brandfolder, so any modifications made on the Brandfolder stage mirror wherever the asset is embedded. This automates the tedious activity of swapping updates each time an edit is made and ensures all people is publishing high-quality, accredited, and better of all, present collateral.

All of those instruments forestall designers from responding to asset requests all day, giving them the liberty to concentrate on precise design duties and be extra productive. Talking of…

Plan New Inventive Content material & Handle Design Initiatives

Aside from managing the property your crew already has, creatives are additionally tasked with:

1) Planning new high-quality content material 2) Producing that content material in an environment friendly approach

Brandfolder has a built-in reporting function so you may see which property are used most frequently, how they’re getting used, and who’s utilizing them. This function is totally customizable and offers you dozens of studies to see which inventive content material is well-liked amongst your customers… and what content material they cross over. Then you may leverage that information to establish new content material wants and strategically plan new digital tasks.

What’s actually distinctive about our reporting function is that it additionally tells admins what customers are trying to find, and what search phrases generate zero outcomes. Designers can use this data to establish content material gaps and work these property into their queue.

Then, you may handle your whole digital tasks proper in Brandfolder utilizing our Workspace function. Workspace is basically a venture administration device that permits you to break tasks into smaller duties, assign these duties out, set due dates, and talk on activity standing on a crew board. We additionally combine with Smartsheet to present customers extra sturdy venture administration capabilities. This manner you may oversee the whole content material lifecycle in Brandfolder as a substitute of getting to depend on a number of instruments to handle inventive property — and as soon as tasks are wrapped up, you may transfer the finished content material immediately into the asset library with a couple of clicks.

Plus, Brandfolder comes with quite a few out-of-the-box integrations and is constructed with an open-source API, so you may join your DAM with all the design instruments your groups use and push information between software program for a clean workflow. This beats having to obtain the asset from Brandfolder, add it to the native editor, obtain it as soon as edits are full, re-upload to Brandfolder, and merge the file with the prevailing asset.

A few of Brandfolder’s integrations for designers embrace:

Word: Different groups also can profit from our integrations as a result of they’ll join Brandfolder with the instruments they use for his or her tasks and push property over immediately from the DAM. You possibly can learn extra about our different integrations right here.

Report On the Success of Inventive Collateral

Brandfolder’s reporting options are useful for extra than simply planning content material — you need to use Brandfolder’s reporting options to observe the success of your digital tasks and artistic efforts.

As we talked about earlier, you need to use our reporting device to take a look at top-performing property, the place your crew’s digital media lives on-line, who engages with property most, and extra. Being able to quantify the success of your inventive efforts can go a great distance when pitching new tasks or increasing inventive crew efforts.

Get a Free Demo of Brandfolder

Brandfolder is without doubt one of the most customized inventive asset administration platforms accessible as a result of our buyer expertise crew talks by way of your particular wants and works with you throughout the whole onboarding course of to verify:

• Property are organized in a logical approach on your designers and people accessing inventive information
• You’ve gotten the suitable quantity of space for storing
• Brandfolder is provided with the suitable options to help the totally different groups who might be utilizing your DAM device
• We join Brandfolder with the suitable instruments utilizing integrations and our open-source API
• Your customers are arrange and skilled effectively
• And extra

Now we have a 98% retention charge amongst our clients as a result of we take the steps to get them arrange in our DAM system accurately, and we’re at all times accessible to assist after the very fact. To see precisely how Brandfolder can help your design groups and artistic processes, click on the button beneath!