5 Digital Asset Management Tools for Multi-Location Brands
Digital asset management is about more than just keeping content organized. For multi-location brands with hundreds, or even thousands, of store locations controlled by individual managers, digital asset management is about reducing risk.
Digital asset management (DAM) platforms act like central libraries where a brand’s logos, photos, videos, and documents are preserved. DAM makes it easier for marketing departments to improve collaboration and distribute assets efficiently across multiple departments, offices, and store locations. Keeping marketing materials stored in one place removes the need for third-party storage systems and ensures consistency in collateral across all store branches.
The issue of brand consistency is especially important for franchise brands. While franchise operators typically contribute 2% to 7% of gross sales each month to fund national or regional marketing programs, it’s not uncommon for franchisees to be required to spend on their own money on local marketing as well. These local initiatives are where franchise brands most frequently run into trouble. If campaigns are not set up using the correct brand assets, then they may be deemed non-compliant, and trickle-down issues with consistency can plague other franchise locations.
Marketing teams at multi-location businesses and franchise brands are generally responsible for getting the correct brand materials into the hands of the managers who need them. Here are five popular digital asset management (DAM) solutions made specifically with multi-location businesses in mind.
1. Digital Stack
Digital Stack is an all-in-one brand management platform with digital asset management tools designed especially for franchisors and multi-location businesses. Using a one-to-many approach, Digital Stack encourages brands to pre-populate their stores’ local area marketing plans and then schedule content for all locations within the unified platform. Marketers have the option to store all of their brand assets in a single head office account, or they can use local area collections. What that means in practical terms is that a local marketer or store manager can access content from a brand’s home office and then amend selected template to fit their store-specific demographic. Digital Stack also provides bulk order printing and merchandise ordering through the platform, along with a number of other brand management tools.
2. ioMoVo
ioMoVo brings photos, videos, and documents together in one platform, so brands and franchises can execute digital campaigns while reducing brand risk. The comprehensive solution serves as a single location for brands to share and distribute all branded collateral, which accelerates market adoption and ensures that local marketing teams are staying compliant with regulations. Utilizing special permissions and user roles, franchisors can select different levels of authorization for various users. Corporate teams can give individual franchisees access to specific collections of branded assets for their store locations, and they can link certain graphics or marketing materials to pre-approved marketing templates that can be used to develop new assets for local campaigns.
3. Brandfolder
Brandfolder bills itself as the world’s most intuitive DAM, with a specific design for enterprise usability. The Brandfolder platform serves as a central location where multi-location brands and franchisors can share and distribute collateral, and quickly deploy new campaigns for local markets. Unlike other DAM solutions, Brandfolder includes design features so users can create collateral within the cloud-based platform. Brandfolder also leverages real-time data that shows how files are being viewed and when they are being downloaded by external parties, along with the option to set expiration dates on certain files as a way to prevent outdated assets from being sent out.
4. Sesimi
Sesimi is used by more than 7,000 brands. The digital asset management platform gives brand marketers a way to store, manage, and share assets from one central location. Corporate marketers can set user access and permissions, so local teams have access to the right assets. Those same assets can be named, tagged, and sorted with key information, like location, metadata, SKU PIM, file type, and even color to make advanced searching especially easy. File editing tools give users a way to resize and adjust assets without needing to export files into a separate program. When it does come to time to share, Sesimi offers stakeholder access with public and private folders, along with SSO authentication to streamline how users interact with Sesimi and simplify the login process using single identity management.
5. BlueSky ETO
BlueSky ETO’s brand management software was designed to increase marketing effectiveness and productivity through effective brand compliance. A big component to BlueSky ETO involves digital asset management. BlueSky’s digital asset management software integrates with its automated marketing platform to help marketing departments organize assets and make them available to colleagues in the field. Individual user controls give admins the ability to determine which assets can be accessed and edited by other users. Marketers can even create separate collections of assets to share with individual branch managers or local marketing teams. Unlike other digital asset managers on this list, BlueSky’s solution is engineered to order, which means the company offers customizable pricing based on each brand’s size and needs.
