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Forrester Research Report: Harnessing the Benefits of Your Brand’s Visual Media

Did you know that nearly one in five (18%) U.S. adults returned an item bought online because the product description was misleading or incorrect? That’s a costly mistake on the part of brands impacting customer retention and the bottom line. 

According to Forrester Research​​, PIM-DAM [Product Information Management-Digital Asset Management] solutions can help brands avoid these missteps by delivering consistent and personalized customer experiences across channels. Forrester’s recent report PIM and DAM Are the Power Couple for Your Content Strategy advocates how brands can integrate technologies and systems to lower the cost of content delivery and offer consumers engaging experiences. 

Consumers rely on visual assets—from images and videos to 360-product spins and augmented reality—to help them reach purchasing decisions. Consequently, compelling rich media sets brands apart from their competition, winning loyal customers. No wonder Forrester observes that “[c]ompelling product content isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have across all your digital touchpoints.”

As omnichannel commerce accelerates, however, the volume of required assets continues to grow exponentially, errors in product data frustrate and annoy consumers. To keep up with demand and wow consumers with a compelling, reliable shopping experience, companies need the right tools. The answer lies in an integrated strategy that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to generate high-quality and consistent data at scale. 

Many brands are stuck with legacy systems and siloed workflows that not only require long manual hours to complete, but also generate disparate product content, resulting in fragmented capabilities and hampering growth. To improve team agility and streamline the management of digital assets, brands must switch to intelligently automated workflows. 

A modern DAM solution unifies asset libraries across all content systems—from creation to experience—on one platform. Team members (designers, developers, marketers) can then quickly and optimally create, manage, and deliver assets from a single source of truth. Bottom line: This isn’t just about technology. It’s about breaking down silos between creatives and techies to ensure faster time to market and places compelling content front and center for B2B and B2C shoppers.

On average, it takes eight touchpoints to close a sale. As consumers go from one device to another, brands must ensure that first, product-related assets load fast on all devices and browsers; and, second, new or updated experiences go live promptly on all touchpoints. Hence the need for omnichannel campaigns.

Automation efficiently and accurately optimizes assets for the entire media life cycle—devoid of human errors, eliminating manual tasks like cropping and sizing assets for each device. As a result, teams can publish consistent data on pricing, sizing, and more. Brands can rest assured that the ultimate user experiences are accurate and engaging.

Given that resource bottlenecks, performance issues, as well as antiquated tools and processes are common roadblocks to meeting the increasing demand for digital touchpoints, adopting PIM and DAM is vital. There is value to this type of connectivity, including:

  • Fast time to market
  • Streamlined workflows
  • Consistent data on pricing, sizing, description, etc.
  • Accurate assets and information
  • Engaging, consistent customer experiences across all touchpoints

For a solution offering the above benefits, look no further than Cloudinary’s Media Experience Cloud (MXC), an API-first, SaaS platform for intelligently creating, transforming, optimizing, and delivering rich media online through content-aware automation. With higher omnichannel speed, an innovative experience, and capabilities focusing on customer engagement, brands can harness the full benefits of visual media.

Simply put, Cloudinary provides the essential media layer in the technology stack for meaningful digital experiences. 
Want to learn more? Download and read the Forrester report.

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