DAM for retail: a key ally in the customer experience

The retail sector is in a constant state of evolution. Moving with different trends and societal factors, retail bends to the whims of consumers and the technologies that can optimise their experiences. But which solution should they adopt? And how can DAM for retail improve the customer experience and boost sales in this sector?

For retailers, it is more important than ever that they effectively manage their online presence, by deploying an industry-specific enterprise DAM, i.e. DAM for retail. And it is by properly managing and optimizing their marketing content that they will be able to optimize their end-to-end sales performance, from order to collection. 

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Often equipped with slow and poorly optimized tools that are not very ergonomic, companies in the retail sector have difficulty effectively organizing their product marketing strategy and putting their products online. These difficulties can quickly translate into a loss in the quality of the customer experience, and therefore a drop in turnover.

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Consumers now expect more than just visuals before making a purchase. It's no longer simply a question of adapting to local markets and the different “seasons”. Personalization in the customer journey is now key to standing out from the competition. How can DAM for retail help retailers sell their products better?

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If you would like to learn more about how Wedia's DAM solution addresses the marketing challenges of the retail industry, visit our dedicated page on DAM for retail.

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Why should major retail brands be interested in DAM?

The retail sector faces many challenges. And its current state cannot be boiled down to "Amazon against the rest of the world“. Far from it. This sector is characterized by the wide variety in its models, a variety that has increased even more with the health crisis. Numerous brands have reinforced their digital presence, and developed "click and collect", while also working on the digitalization of their stores. With one obvious aim: to meet the needs of consumers who are increasingly sensitive to the quality of the shopping experience.

From the app (or website) to the store itself, this experience involves renewing the offer and customizing the journey, two objectives to which enterprise DAM makes a strong contribution.

An enormous productivity gain with DAM for the Retail sector

Renewing the offer so that it is in line with customer expectations means in particular reducing the time to market of a product to a minimum. A major retailer has experienced this: with an enterprise DAM that automates the variations of all the media needed to ensure the presence of a product, the time to market is reduced from a few weeks to just a few days. Valuable time savings, especially when it comes to not missing the right moment (a season, a festive period) to launching a new private label, for example.

On this scale, there's no way we're going to let everyone wander around for hours looking for a visual. Content categorization and search functions should allow quick access to product packshots, campaign visuals, etc. 

Productivity is also guaranteed by integrating DAM with existing PIM (Product Information Management) solutions as well as with brand or retailer e-commerce sites. In addition, DAM allows you to categorize and search for your content according to your company's operating and organizational rules. 

Thanks to advanced search functionalities (full text, faceted, Artificial Intelligence...), your teams will be able to find the content they need very quickly. The considerable time saving generated by the use of the Wedia DAM allows teams to gain in productivity and thus to allocate more time to different tasks.

Creating a positive and memorable customer experience

As for the personalization of the experience, it is also more accessible with DAM. Assets are referenced with a level of documentation (metadata) that greatly facilitates their identification according to audience information stored elsewhere in the information system (CRM, CDP, etc.) 

In the end, the proper circulation of this content largely defines the customer experience and its relationship to the product. Content must not only be diverse and attractive, but also personalized for each visitor and each context to enhance the user experience. This improvement is achieved through content scoring and analysis of marketing performance. It is essential that the customer's relationship with the brand and its image be immediately striking and positive.  

Promoting phygital interactions

Many retail brands have invested heavily in their online presence in recent years. But the connection between online and offline should be seamless and customers should feel that they have the same experience wherever they are coming into contact with your brand. 

This may for instance require providing high-quality and 360° photos or videos on your online shop so that customers get a thorough feel of what your products are like. What's more, their online customer account can follow all the purchases they make whether in-store or online, which in turn helps build up a personalized overview of each customer. This then makes it easier to build individual campaigns for each customer, provide adapted suggestions for them online and offer enticing offers and discounts for them in store. 

Mixing between your interactions with customers means carefully following their customer journey and making sure that at each touchpoint they have the right content, information or products to entice them to engage with you and your brand. 

Your MarTech stack connected to one central hub

When it comes to managing websites, marketing campaigns and databases, retailers need to be able to quickly and intuitively access the right information and cross reference this to other tools. What's more, each of these software products need to work independently and in collaboration with the other tools. Taking assets from a Product Information Management (PIM) system and adding them to a DAM platform, should come at the click of a button and the same goes for plugging this into a Content Management System (CMS).

Working with significant volumes of photos, videos and product information, retailers have to be able to easily disseminate the right assets to the right market and territory in order to ensure they are providing a high-quality experience for consumers. 

With a MarTech stack that is integrated and works seamlessly, retails can rest assured that the way they share, distribute and measure content and assets is optimized.

Media Delivery: a key tool for retailers

With Wedia's Media Delivery solution, retailers are able to take assets directly from their DAM and publish them across their various channels, including website, e-commerce website, newsletters or social media.

Once published, detailed analytics provide a broad overview of how each asset or campaign is performing, giving vital insights into how users interact with the brand.

Thanks to an optimized Content Delivery Network (CDN), the delivery of web content is assured and the audience is able to access content rapidly and without interruption.

As retailers seek to provide the very best experience for their customers, such tools prove to be an important component of their marketing strategy.

DAM as the Single Source of Truth in your company

For the Retail sector companies, DAM provides the key function of a "Single Source of Truth“. This means that the DAM makes references to the assets that the teams can work with confidently: images, videos, marketing documents with finely tuned modification rights to facilitate localization without distorting the brand. 

You are then assured that all your teams are working with the most recent versions of your digital assets and that the consistency of your group's communication will be maintained. 

The use of artificial intelligence makes it easy to generate content variations, particularly when testing their impact on the different stages of the purchasing process, from an email to a product page.

When integrated into the information system, an enterprise DAM also becomes the "media reference" for the various PIMs and CMSs that coexist in large organizations. It therefore helps to significantly reduce the duplication of content with significant cost savings. In addition, by providing rich data (because it is modelled according to business dimensions) on media consumption, DAM provides the means to control content production through performance.

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In a world where sales rely on personalization and emotion, delivering individualized and image-driven experiences throughout the customer journey is of critical importance. To better engage customers and stimulate sales, Wedia, a SaaS software publisher, offers Digital Asset Management (DAM) to large retail companies.