What Is A Marketing Portal?

Introduction To Marketing Portals

A marketing portal is a dedicated online space for marketing teams to store, search, create, and manage their digital assets for marketing campaigns across multiple digital and physical channels. It’s a single solution for digital assets that allows you to control who has access to them, where they are dispersed, and how they are used. A marketing portal is the path your digital assets travel through to get to their various marketing campaigns.

Digital asset management (DAM) and marketing asset management solutions serve as marketing portals for companies that need their assets to be adaptable and flexible for distribution across many platforms. By using a DAM, you can reuse your digital assets for use through print, email, web, marketing, advertising, automated marketing campaigns, and more.

How Does DAM Act as a Marketing Portal?

A DAM solution is a form of a marketing portal that acts as a repository for digital assets and enables work in progress (WIP) assets, distribution across channels, and connects to other systems in your marketing technology (martech) stack. DAM provides the ability to have more control over many aspects of brand management and marketing.

DAM helps you control:

• Brand Voice

  Your marketing communications and sales teams have access to all the same materials through the DAM to support their efforts and enforce a consistent brand voice in their sales and marketing materials.

• Brand Image

  If you store all your digital assets in a single repository, your teams have easy access to the approved version of assets that they can use for their marketing, advertising, and creative campaigns. When everyone is using the correct version of digital assets, your brand image is strengthened through consistency.

• Marketing Compliance

  A brand asset is valuable and needs to be protected. You can gain complete control of your digital assets by storing them in a DAM that includes digital rights management and permissions-based access. A branded portal allows users to access only the assets they are authorized to see.

• Collaboration

  DAM enables collaboration by providing a single source for departments to share, work on, and access digital assets. Teams can access the same asset in different formats for different channels to ensure collaboration and consistency across departments. They can also view analytics to see which assets are being used the most to determine what to use in future campaigns.

How Does DAM Work?

• Organize and Categorize

  
  Assets are made searchable by the way they are organized and categorized. Assets have metadata, or information about the asset, attached so that they can be searched by that information. Assets can also be categorized into a folder hierarchy so they can be found logically, they can be tagged with searchable terms, and they can be associated with colors. Dictionary capabilities allow assets to be found when searching for synonyms or related terms. Because of all this data, assets can be searched for using multiple criteria.

• Automated Workflows

  
  Workflows that are built into the DAM allow assets to be managed using automated tasks. You can set tasks that trigger notifications to alert the next person in the process that the next task is ready to complete.

• Digital Rights Management

  
  With digital rights management (DRM) capabilities, users can search to see if the assets they would like to use are available based on region and timeline. Users can also be required to agree to terms and conditions before downloading a file from the DAM.

• Adobe® and Microsoft Connectors

  
  By connecting the DAM to Adobe® and Microsoft programs, users can find digital assets as they are working on their WIP assets without having to leave their creative application.

• Project Dashboards

  
  Dashboards provide a view of where each project is throughout the process. You can also use this information to keep projects on track and determine where improvements can be made to create efficiencies.

• Integrations

  A DAM should also be flexible to connect with other technologies in your martech stack. It should drive the connection between the systems that determine the success of your marketing and advertising campaigns.

Marketing Resources

What Makes a Good DAM?

• Easy to Use. You should be able to navigate the system without trouble. In the best implementations of DAM, users hardly even know they are using the system because it is so easy.
• Connection and Partnership. Your DAM system should help connect your marketing technologies so your solution provider should offer ways to integrate systems and partner with you to align on product roadmaps.
• Provides Control. A DAM should provide you with control of your digital assets so there should be options for user access control, permissions within assets and groups, and options for securely sharing digital assets.

How Does DAM Fit in with Marketing?

Since images, videos, and other digital assets are a major part of marketing campaigns, they are an important element for your marketing objectives and need to be accessible. An intelligent marketing technology stack should include a DAM that helps connect your digital assets to your other systems.

Who Needs DAM?

There are a few key signs that your organization needs DAM. If you experience any of the following, it is probably time for you to start looking into a DAM solution for your company:

• Have trouble finding assets.
• Use assets one time and then never use them again.
• Have trouble tracking marketing projects.
• Not sure if you have the legal rights to use assets.
• Creative for campaigns is constantly over-budget.
• Have trouble converting assets into the formats needed for different campaigns.
• Not sure if you are using the most recent, approved version of the asset.
• Campaigns are not consistent across channels.
• Not sure how your external partners are using digital assets.

Digital Asset Management is used as a marketing portal in a wide-range of organizations across many verticals. It is used to manage assets and workflows across many industries:

• Food & Beverage
• Consumer Packaged Goods
• Retail & Apparel
• Public Sector
• Media & Entertainment
• Financial Services
• Pharmaceuticals

On Premise DAM and SaaS DAM

The best DAM solutions are flexible to provide the most capable options for the specific needs of your company. That’s why MediaBeacon offers a flexible platform that lets you choose the path that’s best for your business, whether it’s on-premise, SaaS, cloud, or a hybrid combination. On-premise SaaS, cloud, and hybrid digital asset management all provide secure access to all of your digital assets.

• SaaS Digital Asset Management. A SaaS DAM is hosted by the vendor so it reduces the workload on your IT department. This typically means that you don’t have to manage licenses, you have 24/7 global infrastructure support, and up-to-date software. Secure DAM companies will typically have an ISO 27001 certification. With SaaS, you can host your assets in the cloud so that they don’t take up any file storage space.
• On Premise Digital Asset Management. An On-Premise DAM is hosted internally and is usually managed by your IT department. This means that you take care of the updates internally. Because this option allows running the DAM solution from your own hardware, you also have the option to host it in a cloud service to help reduce storage space requirements.