At Pics.io, we love seeing how our customers use our platform to bring their ideas to life. It’s always inspiring to hear their stories—how they stay organized, collaborate more easily, and focus on what really matters. We recently had the chance to sit down with two incredible people from the Keyes marketing team to chat about their experience with Pics.io.
But before we dive into that conversation, let’s take a moment to introduce the company behind it all.
The Keyes Company has been shaping Florida’s real estate landscape since 1926. Founded by Ken Keyes, it started as a small, family-run business and has since grown into Florida’s largest independently owned real estate brokerage. Despite its impressive scale, Keyes has held onto its roots—prioritizing personal connections, community involvement, and top-tier service. Now in its fourth generation of family leadership, the company continues to evolve while staying true to its core values.
At its heart, Keyes is about more than just buying and selling property. Their vision is simple: build stronger communities, one person and one home at a time. And with a full suite of real estate services—from residential and commercial transactions to mortgage assistance and property management—they’re making that vision a reality every day.
We sat down with Madeline Mordarski, Chief Marketing Officer, and Aaron Fisk, Director of Associate Marketing, to talk about their experience using Pics.io, how it has transformed their workflow, and what they’d love to see in the future.
- What was the biggest challenge your team faced before using Pics.io?
Aaron: One of the biggest issues we had was helping our real estate agents understand which photos they actually had the rights to use. We have a massive collection of images—some from licensed sources like Adobe Stock, others from our own photographers—but before Pics.io, there was a lot of confusion.
Agents would grab a photo from Google or another listing site, not realizing they didn’t have the appropriate licensing rights.
Now, with Pics.io, we’ve curated a collection of approved images, whether they be royalty-free or images we have full ownership rights to. If an agent pulls a photo from there, they know it’s safe to use. Plus, the visual search and tagging system makes it easy to find exactly what they need.
"We needed a system where people could self-serve, find what they needed, and not rely on a lean team to locate every single file. With public collections and search, we’ve finally solved that problem and turned our efforts and energy towards innovation, developing unique campaigns, and aligning our work to the businesses strategic goals."
- Before Pics.io, where were all your assets stored?
Madeline: For marketing? Everywhere. Dropbox, Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Drive, SharePoint, Monday Files, Email… it was pretty messy and at some point, it just became too time-consuming to find the right file. In a fast-moving business like real estate, we couldn’t afford that.
Aaron: Yes, and part of it was because we sourced different platforms for different, specific needs rather than seeing how we could streamline our workflows. For example, we used Adobe because our designers worked there, but the proofing system wasn’t great. Dropbox was nice to work with, but expensive, and it didn’t have good metadata capabilities or public publishing. SharePoint worked for documents and spreadsheets, but it wasn’t built for rich media files or set up to easily manage permissioning.
- What made you decide to move to a dedicated DAM like Pics.io?
Madeline: We ran an analysis, and our team members were spending up to 13% of their day just finding—or filing—files.
We have 4,000 real estate agents, 200 employees, and over 40,000 assets. Before, when someone needed an asset that was already created, they’d come to us to search for it and send it their way. The team was operating as human search engines, which obviously wasn’t sustainable.
We needed a system where people could self-serve, find what they needed, and not rely on a lean team to locate every single file. With public collections and search, we’ve finally solved that problem and turned our efforts and energy towards innovation, developing unique campaigns, and aligning our work to the businesses strategic goals.
- What do you love about Pics.io? And what would you like to see improved?
Madeline: There’s a lot we love. Version control is a lifesaver. Before, if we updated a file—let’s say we fixed a typo on a PDF—we’d have to re-upload it, find every place it was linked, and manually update the target link. Now? We just upload a new version, and the link stays the same.
Another big win was the recent update allowing private comments in proofing. When we send files for approval, we don’t necessarily want guests to see the internal feedback and QA before it is client ready. That update made things much smoother.
As for improvements, one feature that would make a big difference is a clearer way to signal when guests are done reviewing a proof. Right now, unless a reviewer leaves a comment, there’s no way to tell if they’ve finished looking at a file. Having simple approval options—like marking something as approved, approved with changes, or needing further work—along with email notifications, would make the process much smoother.
Another challenge is keeping the left-hand panel organized. Since we create a large number of public collections and websites, the panel has become cluttered over time. It would be really helpful to have an option to hide or collapse sections, making navigation more efficient.
Search is another area where we see room for improvement. While Pics.io does a great job of finding specific images, it doesn’t always show the folder or collection they belong to. There are times when we don’t just need a single file—we need to access everything in the same category—so having a way to locate the parent folder more easily would save us a lot of time.
- How was the implementation process?
Madeline: For us, it was smooth—but I would say that managing the implementation on your own is only feasible if you have experience in or are comfortable with all that it takes to set up a DAM: Workflow design, metadata standardization, creating a folder structure, data migration, testing, and user training.
There’s definitely a learning curve, and it would be great if there were an onboarding service to help teams structure their DAM the right way from the start. If you don’t set it up properly, fixing it later is a massive headache.
* [Pics.io provides support for users and offers training sessions to help teams get set up from the start.]
"Before Pics.io, our team spent up to 13% of their day just finding and uploading designs—on average, 9%. Since implementing Pics.io, the marketing team specifically has seen a 73% reduction in time spent searching for and retrieving assets compared to pre-launch."
- Right now, is Pics.io only used by the marketing team?
Madeline: Yes, but we may expand it to other departments—and sister companies—over time. We want to be fully confident in how it works and able to articulate and promote the case study before rolling it out further.
- Has Pics.io saved you time?
Madeline: 100%. Twice a week, at least, something happens where we think, 'Wow, I’m really glad we have this.'
From speeding up our go-to-market strategy to reducing back-and-forth in the asset creation process, it’s helped our overall workflow. Before Pics.io, our team spent up to 13% of their day just finding and uploading designs—on average, 9%. Since implementing Pics.io, the marketing team specifically has seen a 73% reduction in time spent searching for and retrieving assets compared to pre-launch.
Beyond quantifiable time saved, it’s improved our customer experience. Before, there was consistent feedback that links for marketing assets were broken—something we rarely hear these days. Similarly, it’s a relief to hear that our associates now feel there’s an abundance of content they can leverage in their own marketing, whether that’s quickly finding an image to post on social media or grabbing a valuable flyer to take into a pitch that helps them win more business.
- That’s great to hear! Thank you both for such an insightful conversation.
Did you enjoy this interview? Give Pics.io a try! — Or book a demo with us, and we'll be happy to answer any of your questions.
