Measuring DAM ROI

There are several ways to approach DAM Return on Investment (ROI) and it’s a good idea to set up regular reporting cycles at the beginning of the deployment. As the DAM gets rolled out with more users and markets, the returns will continue to grow and increase. Here are some examples of the kinds of data to collect for success measurements.

Quantitative: metrics through measurement

  • How many assets were downloaded and repurposed? This number will help you quantify the amount of time spent in 1) finding an asset and 2) re-using and repurposing an asset. Often, out of frustration at not being able to find what they’re looking for, creative teams will simply re-commission work from an agency to meet a tight deadline.
  • Cost Avoidance: Looking at the downloads over a period of 1 week or 1 month, a cost avoidance calculation can be determined against the typical agency fees for creating new assets vs. cost to re-use or re-purpose existing assets. If, in a typical period, 6 different creative assets that were previously commissioned such as creative pack shots, eCommerce product images, or in-store guidelines for example, but have now made assets more easily retrievable and repurposable, you may be able to calculate a weekly or monthly savings of many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
  • Brand protection. With good rights metadata, brands can avoid mitigation of asset misuse. Infringement costs can be significant (in the millions) and having clear guidelines and a well-managed integrated DAM ecosystem can reduce legal costs by 20%.
  • Sales impact. This is determined by data analytics and customer behaviors. Establish a means for measuring the impact of marketing campaigns, social media contributions, seasonal sales figures for example, to determine which assets had the most impact on sales. These insights can be shared with the Customer Relations Management systems and/or Customer Data Platform and can be used to inform future planning.
  • Impact on Marketing KPIs such as better click-through rates, measurable links to performance of specific assets, and offering feedback and insights result in better media spend calculations.
  • Brand consistency. Increasingly, shoppers are no longer relegated to a single store to purchase their favorite products. In an increasing world of online shopping, consumers shop around for the best deals from multiple sites. Ensuring a seamless and consistent brand experience, regardless of the distribution channel, will keep customers engaged throughout every stage of the sales life-cycle.

Saving time, metrics through improved efficiencies

Reporting on the amount of time and effort that have been saved with a DAM relies on two success factors:

1. Dedicated Global Support Team who are available for change management, training, and basic on-boarding. Someone to be there should a user need help using the DAM.

2. Improved metadata facilitates discovery and findability. Considering that many companies still rely on shared folder structures on internal servers, a significant amount of time is wasted searching, looking, digging, and finally asking Patty-who-knows-where-everything-is to finally point you in the right direction. The metadata approach to DAM makes it far faster and easier to retrieve and quickly reuse assets. Good metadata and training is key.

  • In a recent audit, ICP found that an organization saved 63% of their time through the use of good training/onboarding and reliable metadata by measuring the ratio of searches to assets downloaded to the searches made.
  • Reduction in duplication. This cannot be emphasized more as business units and markets re-commission or recreate work that may already exist, but are unaware of its existence. Once business units and markets begin to upload their assets into a shared DAM, duplication is often exposed and actions can be taken to reduce myopic ways of working.
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