How to choose the best digital asset management software

So you're ready to banish the demons of obstructed, inconsistent, and not-the-best digital asset management software once and for all? Awesome, let's dive in.

Word on the street is you're looking for a new digital management tool.

Now, you might already know the DAM software market isn't in short supply. There are a lot of them out there, and many of them have their own something-somethings to set them apart from the rest.

That said, some are worth their weight in gold; others are... not so much.

We're about to cover how to choose the best digital asset management software, but let's start with the basics.

What is digital asset management?

Digital asset management (DAM) is all about the flexibility, control, access, portability, as well as reporting of digital assets between key stakeholders in a typical marketing chain.

Basically, digital asset management is concerned with delivering the right content to the right people, in real-time and on all devices.

Need further clarity?

Think of DAM as a tool to measure brand management across an enterprise. Picture it as a cheat code that helps marketers achieve brand consistency and workflow automation.

Okay, but what are digital assets?

Digital assets are media files that carry some type of intrinsic, extrinsic, or transactional value). But really, they're more than just media files.

To realize the full value of a file, you need to have some extra information about it. In other words: metadata.

In the context of digital asset management, a media file or piece of digital content only becomes a usable asset when metadata is associated with it. Plain and simple.

Metadata provides crucial information about a piece of content, which:

Makes it searchable and accessible

Defines usage rights

Provides context

Displays its history of use

What do digital asset management solutions do?

Yes, you guessed it: Digital asset management (DAM) solutions keep marketing materials and branded content in a centrally organized, indexed, as well as searchable database.

At their core, these software solutions give marketers a way to store and organize their digital assets (think: presentations, videos, podcasts, PDF files, animations, etc.) in a consistent, uniform manner.

But wait, it gets better.

With a DAM platform, you’re empowered to repurpose as well as share your best brand assets. And you know how much we all love content repurposing.

Why choose Optimizely as your digital asset management tool

We know, we know; you're asking yourself (or Google) what the best digital asset management tool is.

As we've already mentioned, DAM tools can do a lot of different things. But what if we told you Optimizely Content Marketing Platform is your one-of-a-kind option? It's a project management tool with digital asset management capabilities.

In short: Optimizely brings efficiency on efficiency... on efficiency.

Unlike other DAM solutions (as you'll see below), Optimizely Content Marketing Platform is specifically designed to transform how agile teams store, reuse, as well as manage marketing content and creative.

Here are some use cases to illustrate Optimizely Content Marketing Platform’s prowess in the DAM realm:

Maintain brand governance: Ensure brand consistency by giving all your marketers visibility into what is being produced and the power to quickly leverage approved assets.

Asset versioning and utilization tracking: Track each and every asset’s history. Or get a bird’s eye view of who’s repurposing content and when.

High-level search, foldering, and filtering: Pull together approved assets, reference them, and repurpose them to meet your marketing goals. Or better yet, formulate your content taxonomy to create tags for your assets. Shared foldering is the icing on the cake, as it helps you manage the viewership and accessibility of all assets in your marketing stack. How cool is that?

Integrated workflows: Make the most of built-in workflows that allow you to manage as well as publish finished assets on the go. Talk about convenience!

Quash the costly content production cycles: Say goodbye to incremental content production cost and hello to maximizing content and stretching the budget—thanks to an all-powerful global asset library.

Enough about us, how about we check out how it stacks up versus the other digital asset management tools out there?

The best digital management software: Which tools make the cut

Other than Optimizely Content Marketing Platform, these are the closest thing you can get to digital asset management software.

1) Wrike

Up first is Wrike, a cloud-based project management solution that also doubles up as a DAS platform. This software product helps marketing teams to connect strategy, market planning, execution, as well as results in one platform.

Here are some of Wrike’s functionality templates:

Time tracking

Collaborative editing

Visual timelines

File sharing

Organized file management

Where does it lack?

No integrated workflows

No intuitive search or foldering

No advanced search, tagging, or filtering

2. Bynder

Bynder is another SAAS digital asset management software solution worth a mention.

This DAS solution promises to:

Extract metadata

Manage document templates

Simplify document editing

Manage email signatures

Find and clean up duplicate files

3. Box

Up next is Box, a DAM solution that allows teams to work with people inside and outside their organization, connect all of their apps, as well as protect their valuable content.

Some of Box’s key use cases include:

Working across various file types

Managing marketing APIs

Leveraging metadata

Controlling content security and permissions

4. Monday

Another system worth a mention is Monday. It’s essentially an online collaboration tool tailored for managers and teams. It helps them to:

Store as well as manage team’s files

Keep track of time

Eliminate manual work by embracing automation

Keep information safe

At first glance, Monday looks like a DAM solution, but Monday is merely a project management tool.

5. Trello

Last but certainly not least is Trello, a project management collaboration tool that is trying to make its name in the DAM world (that’s the point, just trying).

This software solution claims to offer an easy, flexible, and visual way to manage as well as prioritize projects.

Marketers can use Trello to:

Edit files

Organize projects visually with labeling, tags, as well as comments

Stay informed on a project’s progress through activity logs and email notifications

Manage their work by creating stories for projects as well as issues for individual tasks

Again, like the other software solutions on this list, Trello is not really cut out for digital asset management (allow us to be a bit honest here).

So...which is the best digital asset management software?

We’ve been mentioning Optimizely Content Marketing Platform a lot because we’re kinda proud of it… okay, more than ‘kinda.’

We knew early on that marketers craved a collaboration-focused DAM solution—one that would act as a one-stop shop for all their digital assets. And we gave them just that.