6 Things that Distinguish Marketing Asset Management from Digital Asset Management

What makes a MAM a MAM, and not a DAM? (We love acronyms.) Each of these tools has a very different use case and feature set. Let’s start with their very definition, as found in our eBook, “Busting the 5 Myths About Marketing Asset Management, DAM, and Project Management:”

Marketing • Asset • Management (MAM) (n): The use of a central repository to customize, organize, and distribute finished sales and marketing content to both offline and online channels. Includes workflows, dynamic and locked content, integrations, security controls, and measurement.

Digital • Asset • Management (DAM) (n): Software used to organize, store, and retrieve rich media and digital assets such as photos, music, and other multimedia content. Related: Media Asset Management

Marketing Asset Management is a lot more than content storage. Here are six things that distinguish it from a DAM tool:

1. Access – Some MAM tools allow for intelligent access to content across a distributed workforce. For example, with single sign-on functionality, a MAM tool can allow users to sign in using the same login as other corporate accounts. This seamless process increases the adoption of the portal.In addition to easy sign-on capabilities, it’s possible to provide specific content to a user group, for example, by region or industry. These access controls give the most relevant and targeted content to users, making them, in turn, more efficient.
2. Varied asset types – MAM allows an organization to manage both offline assets (such as direct mail and branded promotional goods) and online assets (such as email, PowerPoint presentations, and social media posts), supporting an integrated, cross-channel strategy. DAM tools serve primarily digital delivery.
3. Managed customization – with templates and intelligent business rules, MAM tools give distributed organizations the ability to personalize and customize content to meet their industry-specific, customer-specific, and location-specific needs, all while maintaining brand compliance. Features such as modular content, logic and approvals offer the right balance of flexibility and control. For example, within a MAM system, it’s possible to lock certain information or image sizes (so a logo is never skewed), and extend the rights to customize other sections. Templates and intelligent rules can be built around both content and imagery, across multi-page documents and within multiple file types.
4. Distribution – once content is created (on-brand, of course), the ability to distribute the pieces across multiple channels, and under business logic and rules is a defining feature of a MAM system. While a DAM system allows for the single download of the piece of content, MAM gives the ability to publish directly across multiple channels including:

   a. Print – (with option to be sent directly to approved vendors for simple ordering)

   b. Physical kits

   c. Digital assets including Microsoft Word and PowerPoint

   d. HTML email via Outlook

   e. Delivery to marketing automation / email service providers

   f. Directly to social media channels

5. Integration – with API integration into business tools like ERP, marketing automation, and CRM tools such as Salesforce, a Marketing Asset Management tool becomes an extension of business intelligence, rather than a disconnected document storage system. For example, fields within a CRM can be used to inform relevant content within assets based on the lead, contact, or account object. What’s more, when content is delivered, that activity can be tracked back to the CRM record
6. Reporting  – For corporate marketing, analytics and measurement matter. While basic access tracking is available in some DAM solutions, they do not track distribution analytics. In contrast, analytics in a MAM system are designed to offer a detailed snapshot of asset utilization, distribution, as well as customizations made,. This information can be exported for reports and visualized with business intelligence functionality.

Related reading: The Boys and Girls Club of America leveraged MarcomCentral to set up a one-stop marketing shop for their 4,100 clubs to access, download information, customize materials for local audiences, and receive marketing training. Read the full case study.

For more common misunderstandings about Marketing Asset Management, clarified, read our eBook, “Busting the 5 Myths About Marketing Asset Management, DAM, and Project Management.”