How to Increase Your DAM’s ROI: Maximizing Your Brand’s Content Library

Digital asset management (DAM) empowers brands to get a higher return on investment from their media libraries.A new survey of our clients across all different industries shows that PhotoShelter for Brands has helped teams save time, cut costs and get more from their photos, videos, and more. The survey reveals:

• 70% of teams wasted time searching for visual assets before switching to PhotoShelter for Brands.
• 65% of clients weren’t able to find the right assets at the right time before using PhotoShelter for Brands.
• Individual PhotoShelter for Brands users save an average 176 hours per year – at $75/hour, that’s $13,200.
• PhotoShelter for Brands stakeholders combined per account save an average 667 hours per year (way to value the time of your colleagues, partners, and customers!).

And while respondents noted that PhotoShelter for Brands benefits the brand by saving time, saving money, decreasing time to market, and producing revenue, the majority said that PhotoShelter empowers teams to maximize their visual media libraries.

As Jeff Qualmann, Marketing Services Manager at Knape & Vogt put it: “Finally, we have a means and structure to identify, locate and reuse our assets efficiently.”

The ROI of DAM

Fast Communications

A cloud-based digital asset management system allows your visual media library’s contributors to upload photos and videos from wherever they are. It gives your team members and external partners easy access and provides formidable search functionality so they can find the visual assets they need on a tight deadline.

Sydnye White and her team at Special Olympics are able to share photos and files instantly with partners, team members, and stakeholders around the world. Instant collaboration and 24/7 access allows them to share relevant content and timely messages without any bottlenecks in their workflow.

“News is now… It is certainly not news 24 hours later. It’s important that we have editors in different time zones that can keep feeding the media assets that are captioned, tagged, and organized. They don’t have to go search somewhere else. They know there’s a one-stop shop for Special Olympics all the time, no matter where in the world they are.”Sydnye White, VP of Content and Storytelling, Special Olympics

Saving Time Across Teams

Digital asset management saves time for the collection manager as well as staff members and external partners who need access to your brand’s images and video. The collection manager can tag assets in bulk, upload and download images and videos whether they are in the office or on the go, and deliver the assets to stakeholders with the click of a button. On the other side, stakeholders can easily browse the collection and get inspired to use new imagery for a project, run a quick keyword search to find a range of photos and videos, and download files in the size they need. This cuts out a lot of steps and back-and-forth communication.

Maximizing Your Visual Media Library

A digital asset management system ensures your photos and videos are easy to find, download and share. If you can’t find the photos and videos you need, when you need to use them, your visual media library cannot reach its full potential. You run the risk of missing PR opportunities, failing to keep up with the speed of social media, wasting money as valuable assets sit unused, and recreating assets you already have but can’t find.

Visit Greenland uses PhotoShelter for Brands to give external partners like tour operators and travel agencies access to a diverse archive of images. Since switching from a disjointed combination of Flickr and Dropbox to PhotoShelter for Brands, Visit Greenland’s former Manager of Photography and Market Development Mads Pihl told us stakeholders are regularly checking in to the database to find new photos, fulfilling his hope for the system’s potential.

“My hope would be that there will be a longer tail on the images used in the database,” says Mads. “The more diversity that we get through the database, the more diversity there will be in the representation of Greenland by our stakeholders.”

Generating Incremental Revenue

A well-organized media library opens the door to generating revenue through image sales. PhotoShelter for Brands allows brands to turn on e-commerce with the flip of a switch. Forbes reports that universities that don’t prioritize organization and take advantage of photo sales are losing $30,000 annually.

University photo stores allow athletics departments to generate revenue and meet the fans’ demand for imagery.