Footnotes
- Gartner. (2023). Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends in 2023
- Khris Digital. (2025). 45 Data-Driven Statistics for Marketers
Turning marketing campaign migration into an opportunity to optimize digital assets
How campaign migrations can be a strategic move to enhance the quality of digital assets, far beyond storage and accessibility
To meet ever increasing customer expectations organizations continue to invest in improving their ability to deliver personalized experiences. This requires tools and data to segment and microsegment audiences, but without high quality digital assets unique to each audience, the potential value of segmentation is diminished.
Imagine your digital assets as the orchestra of your marketing campaign, with each piece playing a pivotal role in captivating audiences. Digital assets – such as templates, images, videos, text and copy – form the backbone of successful strategies.
And as clients evolve their capabilities, they frequently find themselves migrating campaigns and journeys from legacy systems to advanced solutions. These initiatives provide a strategic opportunity to enhance digital assets and improve their effectiveness.
Our previous blogs introduced a detailed migration strategy and explored data handling techniques for smooth transitions. Now, we shift focus on how campaign migrations can be a strategic move to enhance the quality of digital assets, far beyond storage and accessibility.
Understanding digital asset optimization
Digital assets are critical to successful marketing campaigns. Just as a symphony relies on each instrumentalist’s precision, marketing success depends on the quality and alignment of digital assets to the relevant audience members. Enhancing digital assets can help improve campaign effectiveness by delivering more personalized experiences while enabling your team to maintain brand consistency and reduce compliance risks. Digital asset optimization can be performed at any time, but a transition to new technology provides a ripe opportunity to evaluate digital assets in parallel with data, segments and journeys.
The stakes are high – making the incorrect move during a migration could lead to substantial revenue loss and erosion of customer trust, akin to a symphony missing its conductor and losing tempo. Gartner notes that organizations optimizing their digital assets can see a 20% increase in operational efficiency.1
Often, the urgency to migrate quickly leads implementation partners to recommend a high-speed approach—moving the entire asset library to the new platform. However, this carries risks, such as using expired, outdated or even non-compliant content. By taking time to carefully evaluate and rationalize digital assets, businesses can avoid these pitfalls. Careful evaluation and rationalization of digital assets can transform a mundane storage transition into a strategic upgrade that enhances their overall quality.
By prioritizing rationalization of content during a solution migration, organizations can transform a potentially disruptive event into a strategic initiative. Realigning assets with strategic goals and customer preferences positions businesses to place themselves in a better position to drive impact and potentially increase return on investment.
Navigating the optimization path: A multi-step guide
A successful migration is a multi-step process in which digital asset optimization plays a crucial role. As organizations transition to new systems, it is important to help maintain the continuity of key campaigns and the effectiveness of customer journeys. Even if you’re not actively migrating, embarking on digital asset optimization can be an excellent preparatory step, supporting smoother transitions down the road. At a minimum, it can improve marketer experience by making usable content easier to find and help reduce the potential of compliance risks.
Building a robust strategy for asset management before migration can help identify potential challenges and opportunities, making the eventual migration process more efficient and impactful. Begin your asset optimization journey with these strategic steps:
Optimization journey
Compile inventory
Create an inventory of digital assets, including campaign content, to provide a basis for evaluation.
Evaluate asset performance
Use DAM tools to assess asset performance and brand compliance, focusing on usage, metadata, and tags, to identify assets to prioritize or refine.
Identify duplicates & unmet needs
Spot duplicate assets and identify gaps to prevent carrying redundant content during migration and refine asset needs.
Prioritize strategic assets
Select assets that align with marketing goals for optimization, prioritizing those that support strategic objectives.
Develop optimization plan
Develop a strategy to improve high-priority assets, refining content and metadata to align with marketing objectives.
Implement changes & monitor
Adapt assets during migration and implement ongoing monitoring to ensure continued optimization.
Conduct ongoing reviews & gather feedback
Conduct ongoing evaluations and gather stakeholder feedback for continuous improvement.
Laying the foundation for migration
Effective campaign migration begins with a strategy that prioritizes high-performing assets. Identifying these core assets to repurpose and enhance them for new platforms, reducing new investments. An initial inventory of assets is the first step in the process.
It should be quickly followed by leveraging historical performance data such as email open rates, conversion rates, and ROI to enable the team to determine which assets are considered high value and differentiate them from those that are low impact or have not been used.
Migration should be reimagined as a strategic initiative that goes beyond simple data and asset transfer, encompassing inventory and audit, assessment, rationalization, and content-related optimization, thereby transforming digital assets to drive lasting business impact.
As detailed in the previous blogs, developing a detailed tactical action plan is crucial for seamless migrations. The second blog particularly emphasized the importance of data mapping and validation to help prevent data loss and support a smooth transition. Pre-migration involves asset audits, securing approvals, and setting up technical infrastructure. During migration, data mapping, phased roll-out, and monitoring address issues and allow adjustments. Post-migration checks help confirm assets meet desired benchmarks, and reporting aligns stakeholders with future strategies, supporting higher ROI and marketing success.
As you begin to tackle the pre-migration activities, below are some of the common pitfalls to avoid during asset rationalization:
Common pitfalls to avoid during rationalization
01
Overlooking historic data
Ignoring historical performance metrics and data accuracy can result in losing valuable insights into how successful a campaign is. Teams risk retiring campaigns that may have long-term value or potential for optimization.
02
Retaining unused or low-value assets
Migrating outdated or rarely used campaigns can waste time and storage resource, which will clutter the new platform and make it harder to find high-value assets or materials.
03
Not reviewing with stakeholders
Not involving key stakeholders can result in misalignment on asset/campaign rationalization, emphasizing the need for alignment on campaign goals, regulatory requirements, and functional & technical requirements.
04
No clear exit strategy for retired assets
Retired campaigns and assets should have a defined process for archiving. Failing to do so can lead to unmanageable data silos or reactivation of obsolete materials.
Optimization process essentials
The process of optimization can be broken down into two primary components: rationalizing the asset library and enhancing the quality of the remaining assets.
Rationalization involves evaluating the asset library to decide which items to keep, archive, or delete. This includes removing duplicates, expired, and low-performing content, focusing on retaining high-value assets that support key campaigns. This involves meticulously identifying and moving essential assets needed for these top campaigns, a step ideally informed by the strategic planning and data handling we detailed in our second blog. In fact, 57% of marketers report that data analytics is their most important tool in marketing campaign planning2, underscoring the necessity of analyzing past asset performances to anticipate future trends.
Quality enhancement focuses on improving the tagging and metadata of the remaining assets during the migration. Enhanced metadata improves searchability and organization in the new system while also enabling more effective measurement. Utilizing AI tools can further streamline this process by automating metadata cleansing and content updates while maintaining brand consistency.
By effectively applying these strategies, organizations can enhance their digital asset libraries, supporting a smooth migration and establishing a strong foundation for future marketing success.
Leading practices for asset optimization
01
Cross team collaboration
Encourage collaboration between marketing and product teams to align asset strategies with business objectives.
02
Continuous data analysis
Continuously track asset performance and use insights to improve content.
03
Regulatory compliance
Frequently examine consent and data practices to ensure compliance with standards like GDPR and CCPA, avoiding legal risks.
04
Asset approvals
Confirm digital assets have current brand and legal approvals and follow brand guidelines for smooth transitions.
Key benefits of digital asset optimization
Optimizing digital assets offers several strategic advantages that can improve marketing efforts. When assets are closely aligned with marketing goals and customer preferences, campaigns may achieve greater impact, resulting in increased customer engagement and conversion rates. Targeted and relevant content can further boost customer interaction rates, fostering deeper connections.
Streamlined asset management processes can reduce the time and resources required to handle digital assets, allowing teams to focus on creative and strategic initiatives. Keeping assets current and compliant helps minimize the risk of using outdated materials, thereby supporting reliability and preserving brand integrity.
What’s next in our blog series
In our next and final blog post of this series, we'll explore key enhancement strategies to help improve ROI on your new marketing campaign platform. After migrating to a new platform, we'll discuss various practices and strategies to help you realize the value of your investment. By the end of the series, you will be equipped to make a well-informed, effective decision for your organization, as well as have guidance to execute and sustain your new platform.
How KPMG can help
Successfully navigating through the intricacies of campaign migration and turning it into an opportunity for asset rationalization can be challenging. At KPMG LLP, we bring extensive experience and established methodologies to guide you through every step of the way. Our Customer Advisory team is ready to collaborate with you, supporting a migration that helps you realize the value of your assets and positions your organization for greater marketing impact.
Have questions on how to prepare for a migration? Or simply looking to optimize your digital assets in your current ecosystem? Contact us to discuss our approach and hear how we’ve supported other clients in increasing the value of their investments in digital assets.
Explore more
Insight
Stay Ahead of the Game: Essential Strategies & Planning for Migrations
Discover how a well-planned campaign migration can be a game-changer for marketers seeking to unlock value
Insight
The art of data handling for seamless marketing campaign migration
Understand the key elements for data handling, transformation, and migration to drive a successful campaign migration
Insight
Turn customer data into competitive advantage
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) can help unify data, personalize experiences, and drive measurable ROI across your marketing ecosystem.
Meet our team
Craig Rutkowske
Managing Director, Customer Advisory, KPMG US
Amanda Thurston
Principal, US Marketing Consulting Leader, KPMG LLP
Craig Rutkowske
Managing Director, Customer Advisory, KPMG US
Amanda Thurston
Principal, US Marketing Consulting Leader, KPMG LLP