Retailers are faced with the challenge of efficiently managing huge volumes of digital media, which are key for both effectively communicating the brand story and for driving revenue in stores and online. Customers are looking for consistent and truly personalized experiences across multiple different channels. Businesses have to create timely and visually engaging content that makes the most of each distribution channel and matches in-store experiences. This involves a complex coordination of project management, media management, and team collaboration. To do this, most retailers are investing in Digital Asset Management solutions that can help the creative process, and many have begun to realize that digital asset management is core to their strategy.

While there are certain features and functions that carry across all DAM use cases, there are many ways the technology gets used in the retail industry.

Here, we have identified 3 different scenarios where a DAM implementation has been key to the retailer’s marketing strategies.

1. How a DAM Helps Grow an eCommerce Strategy

In order to grow their online presence, a German-based women’s fashion retailer needed to align their products with the latest fashion and eCommerce trends to attract a younger buyer demographic. That meant providing its customers with the ability to access and purchase the company’s fashion collections through their website and multiple social channels. As customers are looking for incredibly personalized online experiences that reflect an understanding of their needs, interests, and passions, the company was also spending an enormous amount of time constantly changing the visual content to fulfill this demand.

This company adopted a DAM system to be a single source of truth for approved marketing assets. No matter if employees are working directly from Germany or from one of the international offices, easy access to photos and videos is now guaranteed. And all of these assets have been through an evaluation process for usage rights, so employees can work individually to find the assets they need, while items they don’t have permission to use do not show up in their view of the library. With a cloud-based DAM, this retailer is able to quickly create rich new imagery, and get it to their six online stores as the trends constantly change.

Result: Centralized assets and improved workflow

Employees across the world have consistent access to all approved digital assets, and this woman’s retailer can give its teams the freedom to build progressive eCommerce projects and campaigns free of the worry over finding assets and misusing assets without proper permissions.

2. How a DAM Helps Innovate the Omni-Channel Experience

In an effort to increase global competitiveness and remain relevant to customers, a leading sports clothing and equipment franchisor decided to invest in digital retail – but wanted to give a new take on it. The company wanted to emphasize digital technology just as much as the physical store experience, so they came up with a plan to launch their new dual-approach strategy on Black Friday, the infamous day following U.S. Thanksgiving that marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

The company set its goal and left itself 7 months to create an impactful program that would lead to sales growth both in stores and online. It was important to leaders that this initiative was capable of truly innovating the omnichannel shopping experience. Inspired by best-in-class digital experiences from partners, employees, and franchisees, the company came up with the idea for an in-store interactive “Shoe Wall” experience. They created interactive displays that leverage unified commerce data and offer customers, as well as in-store associates, convenient and engaging experiences on the market floor where people encounter retail shoe products. They integrated a DAM into their eCommerce platform in record time to offer online shopping on Black Friday, generating $1.5M in online revenue.

Result: Revenue growth through innovative digital strategy

In partnership with a true eCommerce platform, a digital asset management system helped create a truly innovative in-store digital experience that paired valuable product information, such as sizing, color, and availability with powerful product visuals at the point of sale.

3. How a DAM Helps Manage Multiple Retail Brands

A best-in-class marketer, producer, and distributor of branded garden and pet products implemented digital asset management as a way to manage all of the subsidiary brands. With national and regional manufacturing, purchasing, sales, and delivery affiliates, the company was struggling to keep track of all of the different brands falling under its umbrella. After implementing a DAM solution, however, the company can now keep track of who uses images and when, control access to images, and provide access to the marketing and branding images directly to the affiliates.

Essentially, how it works is that the company keeps a DAM admin team who is in charge of managing the entire collection of photos, videos, and other visual digital assets for all of the affiliate brands. The admins give employees working in different regions access to a subset of the entire collection relative to their marketing needs. This happens through a well-organized set of permissions and controls. When creating their brand campaigns, employees then have direct access to approved assets for searching, browsing, sharing, and downloading. The company uses digital asset management as a central library, and then it gives limited access to each one of the library users based on their needs.

Result: Team enablement and centralized brand library

This garden and pet company has taken a somewhat uncommon approach such that they are using digital asset management not just for brand management, but for the management and execution of multiple companies and product brands under one single parent company. The DAM is acting as a central and accurate library that each section of the company can access as permissions allow.

What these examples show is that for the retail industry, there isn't just one way to benefit from digital asset management technology. To truly get the most out of a DAM system, you need to understand your business and user needs. A DAM solution can then be used as a tool to structure employee and team workflows.

If you're ready to get started with your digital asset management project, make sure you download How to Buy a Digital Asset Management System, for an 8-step playbook to finding a DAM system that works for you.