How DAM Onboarding Shapes Adoption and Long-Term DAM Success

Host: And hello, everybody. Welcome to the fourth and final session of the day — the first day of DAM Week Fall 2025. I hope you’ve been enjoying the sessions so far, and you’re walking away with lots of ideas to take back to your team, and some inspiration for how you can utilize your DAM a little bit better.

Up next, we’re going to be diving into a critical part of every DAM journey, and that is onboarding. This session is “From Launch to Loyalty: How Onboarding Shapes DAM Success.” We’re joined today by Jonathon Laylo, Senior Implementation Manager here at MediaValet. He’s helped countless organizations successfully roll out their DAMs and turn early adoption into long-term success.

As always, the session will be recorded and available afterward through a branded portal. I’ll either get these out to you by the end of day today, or otherwise I’ll do the full DAM Week branded portal and send it out by the end of day tomorrow. Please feel free to drop any questions or thoughts into the chat throughout. We may not have a chance to do a live Q&A at the end, but I’ll try to answer some questions as we go, and if I don’t get to yours, either myself or Jonathon will follow up afterward.

So, anything you want to find out about the onboarding experience, what’s worked or what hasn’t, just pop it into the Q&A or chat and we’ll get back to you. And with that, I’ll hand it over to Jonathon.

Jonathon: Hi, everyone. My name is Jonathon Laylo, I’m a Senior Implementation Manager here at MediaValet. Thank you for joining me in today’s session, “From Launch to Loyalty,” on how onboarding shapes DAM success. I’ve had the pleasure of helping dozens of organizations through this journey — from the chaos of scattered assets to clarity and a centralized, thriving DAM.

When we talk about onboarding, it’s easy to think of it as a technical phase, but really, onboarding is where a DAM succeeds or fails. It’s where you build momentum, form habits, and establish trust in the platform. Today we’ll walk through why onboarding is a make-or-break moment, what the first four months look like, and how structured training and governance turn early excitement into long-term success. I’ve seen onboarding done both ways — rushed and deliberate — and I can tell you that the difference in adoption six months later is night and day.

So let’s start with the big picture on why every DAM story begins with a strong onboarding. Most DAM projects don’t fail because of the software — they fail because of poor adoption. The early experience shapes the user’s perception. When users log in for the first time, they’re asking: “is this going to help me out, or is this just another tool I have to manage?” That’s why first impressions matter.

If they experience an early “aha” moment — like finding a photo instantly — they see the value of having digital asset management software. But if it feels confusing or hard before they even see that value, adoption dips, and they revert back to old habits — scattered folders, disorganized systems, and so on.

I had a client tell me they had a complicated folder structure with no search taxonomy, and before the DAM, they spent hours digging through shared drives — now, with MediaValet, it takes a matter of seconds. Another client told me they were impressed that one asset could live in multiple locations without being a duplicated file — that was their turning point. And I always ask: think about your own teams — how long does it take for a new user to experience value? The faster that happens, the faster adoption sticks. To me, this is why the first few months matter the most.

So the first four months matter the most, in my opinion — that’s the make-or-break window. We break these into four phases: launch, engagement, governance, and value, and each builds on the last.

• Weeks 1–2 (Launch): We begin with kickoff and overview sessions, where we define goals, talk about success metrics, and understand the team’s use cases. We get all stakeholders involved in this session.
• Weeks 2–4: We talk more about metadata and structure. We define your taxonomy, begin test uploads, and start building a scalable structure.
• Month 2 (Engagement): I train admins, and we do integration training. We begin training champions, start finalizing workflows, and begin connecting integrations with other applications.
• Months 3–4 (Governance & Value): We roll out the platform to the broader audience, monitor usage, and receive feedback, making adjustments from there.

Skipping steps early on creates confusion and chaos. But if we build it out gradually, each phase reinforces the last, and that rhythm builds confidence and trust. One organization told me that by month four, their designers couldn’t imagine life without MediaValet. That’s the impact of structured onboarding.

And this brings us to a critical truth: implementation isn’t really about going live fast, it’s about going live right. The data doesn’t lie — speed doesn’t always equal satisfaction. Customers who rush their go-live often end up redoing their metadata, retraining users, or struggling with low usage. Going live right means alignment — clearer workflows, clean data, and champions who can lead from within. Taking a few extra weeks upfront prevents months of confusion down the road.

I had a client who was eager to go live within four weeks. We convinced them to spend two more weeks refining their metadata and permissioning, and they ended up with twice the adoption compared to similar projects.

Once the foundation is set, the next phase is about empowering people through training. This is where adoption takes root. Different users need different training styles:

• Admins — configure reports, maintain settings, and similar tasks.
• Contributors — upload content, tag assets, and manage approval workflows.
• Casual users — mostly come to the library to search for content, download, and share files.

A successful onboarding trains people not just on features, but on purpose — people need to see how the DAM fits into their day-to-day workflow. When they understand how it makes sense, their jobs become easier.

A client of ours created internal DAM champions — each department had one power user who became the local expert. Adoption skyrocketed, because people had someone they could trust and ask for help.

I wanted to tell a quick story about onboarding a recent, mid-sized university. They had 15,000 students and multiple departments managing their own creative content — marketing, alumni relations, communications, and more. When we first started implementing, their challenge wasn’t really adoption, it was alignment. Each department had their own assets, naming conventions, and workflows. The marketing team had cloud drives. The athletics department had their own photo archive. The communications department was storing assets on shared servers. There was no internal communication or consistency.

So when they implemented with MediaValet, the main point of contact and champion wanted to make one thing clear: they needed everyone to feel like this was their DAM, not just another marketing tool. So we focused the onboarding around that, and separated the training paths for admins, contributors, and casual users.

Admins went through sessions on configuring the platform, metadata, governance, and reporting — this helped them take real ownership of the structure and permissions. The contributor users were the photographers, designers, and student interns — they participated in hands-on workshops focused on uploading content, tagging, and managing the approval workflow. Then, of course, we had our casual users — faculty and alumni staff. We did a quick 15-minute training with them on how to find, download, and approve assets, so it built enough confidence without feeling overwhelming.

This is where things got interesting: halfway through onboarding, we realized the different departments had different search behaviors — they were looking for assets using different terminology that didn’t align with ours. So we adjusted midstream and added new metadata fields so each department could quickly search for their specific content. Small pivots like this made a huge difference, and within the first few days we had a high percentage of active users adopting MediaValet.

These early adopters began training other users — coaches were sending assets to their teams, and other departments started working more efficiently internally. By month six, they weren’t just using MediaValet, they were basically championing the platform. The team started creating a “top 10 most downloaded assets” list and added it into their newsletters.

So this isn’t just a great example of teaching DAM — it’s about designing and training around the people, so that it actually works. I always ask teams: how many of you have identified internal champions within your organization? Training and teaching people how to use a system right is crucial.

Governance is the backbone of sustainable success. Governance turns order into confidence — defining naming conventions, permissioning, and workflows is what makes a DAM scalable. Without governance, the system becomes just another shared drive. Clear governance ensures everyone plays by the same rules — it creates accountability and consistency, so no matter who uploads or downloads, the experience stays organized.

We had one company that had ten versions of every logo. After proper implementation, with naming rules and metadata standards, they finally had one single source of truth for that logo file. That’s why order matters — and that’s how it leads into efficient workflows that make everything run smoothly.

A well-defined workflow turns the DAM into a productive engine: upload, then review, then approve, then publish, then archive. Each step keeps content moving efficiently. Clear workflows prevent bottlenecks and ensure everyone knows their role. And they’re not just technical, they’re cultural — teams move faster when they trust the process.

I worked with a creative team that used to spend weeks waiting for feedback, but after workflow automation, approvals took 24 hours. That’s real, measurable impact.

With workflows humming, the next step is showing that all this effort delivers value — measuring the return on investment early. This is where we measure success and tell a story. For ROI, we track metrics like active users, uploads, and searches, and equate that to time saved. But that data alone doesn’t really inspire people — the stories people tell inspire others. Every win is powerful: a marketing team that finds what they need instantly, a designer reusing existing content instead of recreating it from scratch. Each small success builds momentum.

I had a client tell me they saved thousands of dollars in duplicated asset creation within the first quarter. When they shared that metric internally, the executives became DAM advocates overnight, once they saw that value.

And of course, to reach that level of success, you have to avoid the common traps that derail onboarding. The five most common roadblocks we’ve seen are: skipping governance setup, overloading users too early, having no clear ownership or accountability, ignoring early success metrics, and failing to celebrate wins. Each of these chips away at user confidence. That’s why MediaValet includes milestone plans, a dedicated Customer Success Manager, and a training library, to keep customers guided and supported — because the goal isn’t just to launch, it’s to stay successful long term. Without a clear set of paces, these onboarding roadblocks can set your onboarding experience up to fail.

So when onboarding is done right, it looks something like this: you begin to see the benefits of MediaValet. When a DAM is fully adopted, everything changes — MediaValet becomes a central, secure library that empowers users to be creative. It speeds up collaboration and ensures brand consistency. Teams find assets instantly, they avoid duplicates, and they work from approved content. It’s not just about efficiency, it’s about confidence — the DAM becomes more than just software, it becomes part of the company’s DNA.

I had a client tell me, “I can’t imagine going back to how we worked before having MediaValet.” That’s true adoption of the platform.

So, to wrap things up and come back to where we began: onboarding is where adoption begins. It’s where teams build trust, learn best practices, and start seeing the value of the platform. If you take one thing away from today, it’s that a great onboarding experience creates loyal users, confident teams, and long-term success.

MediaValet’s goal is to make sure every customer not only launches, but thrives — because when onboarding is done right, the DAM becomes more than a tool. It becomes part of the culture and part of the company’s DNA.

I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I’d love to hear your onboarding stories, challenges, or wins. Thank you again.