What’s the ROI of DAM?

Let’s get straight to the point. Getting a good return on investment (ROI) on a new software product for your business should be a driving force behind your purchases. Digital asset management (DAM) is no exception.

For small and medium businesses especially, every penny counts. We know because we’re one ourselves. Why would you waste that hard-earned profit on a tool that gives you nothing back?
Let’s answer that one for you. ✨

Why should you buy a DAM solution?

A digital asset management solution is a software tool that provides a home to your brand’s visual content (or digital assets). It’s the single source of truth for anything like video files and photography to logos and infographics. It’s a place where you and your teams can go to find and share the visuals you need to build your marketing campaigns.

At the moment, you're probably spending too much time searching for digital content in your shared drives, Google Drive or Dropbox. With DAM, you can host it all in one place and find it in seconds using fantastic search capabilities.

What ROI can you expect from a DAM?

You're ready to pull the trigger and get yourself a DAM. But your manager is holding the purse strings and needs you to prove it's worth the investment.

Don't panic! Here are some points you can make to get them on your side:

You’ll get your time back

Sure, it sounds like a cliché, but it's true - time is money.

The hours you spend searching for your images and videos wastes so much time. If you pick a good one, DAM could save you hours.

Take one of our clients, Kelly Wynne. Before Dash, they were using Google Drive to store and manage product shots. As Kaitlyn, the VP of Brand, Demand and Community says:

“I was spending two hours at a time looking for one image. And I'm on a VP salary! I told Kelly, our CEO, that I was basically being paid to look for one image.”

Consider your own teams. Does your boss feel paying them to hunt around for assets is the best use of their time? That’s time (and money) they could spend on content creation and getting creative with new marketing campaigns. 💡

That’s exactly what they’re doing at Kelly Wynne:

“When we’re looking at the bottom line, I always tell Kelly that we could be paying Dash X amount, or she could be paying me X amount an hour to search for images in Google. Instead, I'm able to go do other things because of this investment.”

In other words, time savings = money savings. 🤑

You’ll make better use of your assets

Creating visual content costs money. Perhaps you buy stock images, outsource to designers or use Canva to create graphics for social. Whatever it is, you'll want to make sure you're getting the most out of that investment.

As Jay, one of our own customers, told us:

“We have a large collection of photos and graphics. Dash is helping us store, tag, and retrieve them quickly, so we will save money on buying more stock photos and we will save staff time (and that means money) by having the photos immediately available.” Jay, CEO. G2

💡What’s more, if your teams can access everything all in one place, there'll be no need for duplicate content. Instead, they’ll feel inspired to create new ideas. Have a read of how Forthglade does this using Dash.

A sneak peek of Forthglade's Dash 👀

You’ll avoid costly mistakes

Making mistakes in your visual content can be costly, especially when a fair few can be avoided. Take these as an example (and discover how DAM can prevent them🙏):

• Using photos you don’t have permission to use - using unauthorised assets can get you into hot water. A digital asset management tool like Dash will give you a way to manage image rights and ensure you have proper processes in place.
  
  

You can see expiry dates and usage rights in Dash

• Using the wrong logo or graphic in your marketing — this doesn’t just damage your brand’s reputation, it can be expensive to fix too. With Dash, people will have access to the most up-to-date assets, and they can be notified whenever anything goes out of date.

“(In Dash) we tag by …usage rights. (This) is especially important for images that come from a photographer or an influencer. We also use things like setting a deadline on Christmas-themed logos for example - nobody wants to see those in January!” Nathan Oakly, Chief Operating Office at RJ Living.

You’ll see a boost to the ROI of marketing campaigns

Visual content is paramount to your marketing campaigns. Just take a look at our blog post where we talk about the importance of visual marketing.

What’s more, paid ads and promoted posts on social are increasingly expensive, so getting your visual content on point is important for conversion rates.

A DAM tool will ensure your teams can access those images all in one place. It means time to market is reduced and you can get your content out to your audience quickly. Take Gozney, one of our customers, as an example. They’ve found that working in Dash has significantly shortened their content pipeline. They now create and deliver content in three simple steps:

“It’s just a matter of creating the content, uploading it to Dash, and either distributing it internally (and most of our teams have their own Dash accounts so they’d have access to it instantly) or adding it to the portals for our external partners. We've significantly shortened the time we spend uploading and preparing the content for use.”

This doesn’t just mean campaigns launch quickly. Colleagues will also feel inspired by the content they see, meaning more creative campaigns. 💡

How to calculate the money you could save with DAM

So, now you can see how you could make ROI with DAM, it's time to get some actual numbers. For this, you should take into account three things:

How long it takes your team to search for assets

For this you’ll need: Number of employees who look for assets x minutes searching for assets every day.

Calculate the average asset search time, then multiply it by the number of people in your business who look for assets every day.

For example, let’s say 5 employees search for assets for 15 minutes every day.

That’s 75 minutes every day being wasted across the business (5 x 15). And 6hr 25mins in a five-day working week - 25 hours for a 20-day working month!

Employee wage (per hour) searching for images

For this you’ll need: Employee wage per hour x number of employees who search for assets.

For those 5 key employees, calculate how much they're being paid to search for assets. To do this, work out their hourly wage. For example, they earn £15 per hour for an average 5-day working week (including tax).

That works out at £3.75 for 15 minutes of work. So, now we can calculate the cost of hunting for assets.
To do this, multiply £3.75 by your 5 employees and you get £18.75. That means hunting for assets costs your business £18.75 every day.

Which then works out to £375 wasted each month.

(And that doesn’t take into account the full cost of employee overheads!)

Working out your DAM cost savings

For this you’ll need: Your DAM costs per month

Now, to calculate the cost savings, pull up the pricing of the DAM you want to go with. We’ll use our own as an example. 😇

With Dash, you can start from £49 / $59 per month.

Next, consider how quickly your team members will be able to find the images with a DAM. Let’s say that the 15 minutes average search time is cut down to 5 minutes every day.

Now let’s do the maths again.

Time saved asset searching

What’s the impact of reducing the search average time by 10 minutes each day for 5 employees? What used to take your 5 employees a total of 6 hours and 25 minutes is reduced to 2 hours. That’s a saving of more than 4 hours a week and 16 hours a month!

Employee wage (per hour) searching for images

They’ll be earning £1.25 to search for assets for 5 minutes.

£1.25 x 5 employees = £6.25 searching for assets per day.

£125 per month searching for images.

So, no longer are you forking out £375 per month to search for assets. It’s costing you just £125. That’s £250 saved every month! And, considering the cost of £49 per month for Dash — well, it’s already paid for itself.

Want to work out what that saves in a year? We’ll let you do the maths there 😉.

As we’ve already mentioned, this is just one of the ways DAM will save you money and bring value to your business. This doesn’t take into account the time saved sharing with agencies and partners, integrating with tools and the speed you can get your marketing campaigns off the ground. 🙌

Which DAM tool is best for ROI?

The return on investment you get with DAM will depend on the product you choose. After all, not all DAMs are built the same. If you’re in a smaller business, steer clear of expensive DAMs geared towards big enterprise companies. Signing up for a costly DAM will only make it harder for you to prove ROI further down the line. And you don't want to pay for features you don’t need.

Going for a powerful, yet affordable, DAM (like Dash) is a much better option. You’ll have a simpler user experience without the price tag. (In fact, we won the award for DAM with the best-estimated ROI for small businesses on G2). 😇

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Resource

The Dash pitch deck 

Show your boss how Dash provides the best return on investment (ROI) for your brand with this editable slide deck. 🤑

Download now

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💡 If you’re currently searching for a digital asset management tool, download our DAM comparison worksheet that’ll help you build a shortlist of vendors.