DAM vs MRM: The Difference You Need to Know

DAM and MRM handle the most significant amount of digital or marketing assets. Understand how there are different from each other and what purpose they serve.
DAM vs MRM: The Difference You Need to Know - Impression #1

A revolution in marketing assets and digital assets is underway. Given the volume, variety, and speed of digital asset generation, organizations find it challenging to prioritize investments and resources in digital asset management and marketing resource management.

It comes with more responsibility for managing marketing and media assets for brand compliance and a greater focus on addressing asset management issues.

Marketing leaders are aware that digital asset management and media/marketing asset management handle the largest amount of digital or marketing assets. But sometimes it is a bit complex to understand how there are different from each other and what purpose they serve.

Digital asset management and marketing asset management, and media asset management are often used interchangeably. But, they differ tremendously as per their definitions.

 

What is Digital Asset Management?

According to Gartner, digital asset management stores, manages and renders rich media, including text, graphics, photos, video and audio. DAM can be sold as a software license or hosted service. Typically, DAM systems are intended to support a wide range of actors — from specialized creative to generalist production to more operational and administrative roles — both inside and outside an organization, often including agencies and channel partners.

 

What is Marketing Asset Management (MRM)?

As per Gartner definition, marketing resource management applications enable strategic planning and budgeting, program management, creative development and distribution, content management, media planning and execution, event coordination, and resource measurement. In MRM 2.0, these five competencies are now collapsed into three: work management, asset management, and performance management.

DAM vs MRM: Key Differences

  DAM MRM
Feature and Capabilities
  • Planning, task management, approvals, and workflow of digital assets
  • Asset ingestion and creation
  • Audit trails for changes, reviews, and approvals.
  • Organize and store assets with metadata and taxonomy management
  • Publication and distribution with access controls, tracking, digital rights, and life cycle management capabilities
  • Strategic planning and financial management of marketing assets
  • Creative production management to automate processes for programs, campaigns, and product launches
  • Central repository for marketing assets, content, and collateral
  • Marketing fulfillment for local marketing, sales calls, and meetings
  • Marketing performance management to address performance metrics
Benefits
  • Improve operational excellence 
  • Accelerate creativity and production
  • Uphold brand consistency
  • Minimize cost and improve ROI
  • Minimize production bottlenecks 
  • Simply workflow and process
  • Efficiently allocate resources 
  • Improve marketing ROI
Ideal for
  • Digital asset consistency
  • Boost operational efficiency
  • Improve brand engagement
  • Work management
  • Asset management
  • Performance management

 

Explore Pimcore DAM Features

Factors to Consider

Now the question is which one is right for marketing leaders given the complexity of marketing operations. The evolution of both MRM and DAM demands decision-makers to make an informed decision while deciding the solution. Here are the key factors to consider:

  • Evaluate your existing marketing resources and digital asset management tools and technologies?
  • How effective is the current solution to create, manage, and measure your asset management initiatives?
  • Assess functional gaps and identify opportunities for improvements
  • Capture potential barriers that may prevent adequate utilization of the system
  • Select the solution based on the exact requirement, price, and complexity 
  • Keep in mind the future need so that your selected solution can grow and evolve with your organization.

Organizations must master the management of marketing resources and digital asset management. Through effective strategy across all available resources and assets, they can achieve continued and sustained growth. Failure to do so risks mismanaged and silos assets that can adversely impact your marketing initiatives.

 

Want to explore Pimcore DAM platform and how they meet your business requirements? Schedule a FREE demo with Pimcore consultants.

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Author:Christian Kemptner
Christian Kemptner
  • Marketing & Partner Management
142 articles by this author

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