Settings, Pricing, & Online Rentals | PugTalk

Settings, Pricing, & Online Rentals

Understand and optimize how you rent your units!

Online rentals are the most important part of your website! But getting rentals has everything to do with how you set up your units, your pricing, and your settings. Join our very own Tommy Nguyen as he digs into the ins and outs of your online rental process:

Understanding your customer's rental experience
Different rental settings, what they do, and how to use them
Using discounts and slash-through pricing
Online rental best practices

Featured Speakers: Tommy Nguyen

Aired: July 12, 2023
Duration: 1:06:28

Overview

If you don't have time to watch the whole session, here are some of our favorite parts:

At 8:00, Tommy highlights features of online rentals along with some online shopping statistics
11:50, Tommy discusses what information you should gather during an online rental and what information could wait
Starting at 14:00, Tommy highlights when to gather which information, including noting that less is better if in lease-up mode
At 16:00, Tommy covers how to handle leases, whether online or in-person
20:30, Tommy talks about collecting ID's with online rentals, including the benefits and drawbacks
Around 22:30, Tommy discusses the timing for sending new customers their gate codes
At 26:50, Tommy highlights which parts of the rental process may be better left to your manager instead of software
32:40, Tommy starts digging into settings available on our websites
Starting at 33:30, Tommy covers the importance of taking yourself through your own rental process
Around 33:50, Tommy talks about the announcement bar feature
36:20, Tommy discusses several different rental settings available
At 36:40, Tommy talks about same-day move-ins and when you should consider offering these
Starting around 40:00, Tommy digs into different autopay settings you can use during the rental process
44:00, Tommy highlights the settings that are available for gate codes
At 45:00, Tommy notes several options for reservation settings
48:10, Tommy discusses various payment settings
Starting at 49:50, Tommy highlights the settings you can utilize for insurance
At 51:10, Tommy covers the ID Upload feature along with whether or not you should require ID during the rental process
53:40, Tommy notes the benefits of customizing your rental success message
Around 55:10, Tommy discusses a new feature to offer a one-time lock charge
Starting at 1:01:30, Tommy talks about strike-through pricing settings and options

Carol Mixon-Krendl

SkilCheck

Website: https://www.skilcheck.com/
Email: carol@skilcheck.com

Hailey Teal

Jenkins Organization

Website: https://www.jenkinsorg.com/
Email: hailey@jenkinsorg.com

Resources from this session

Awesome Quotes

“Once your operation is in place, you can become more dynamic with your pricing, but that requires data. You need some method of being able to record the data that you need to know whether your price is in the right place - whether you need to move it up or start giving some concessions.” - Warren Lieberman

“I never want to downplay to what someone else is doing. I'm better than they are, then I'm going to be worth a higher price. That's what value is. If you go out to a restaurant and get really good service, would you go back? Yes! What if it was pricier? You'd still go back because you got better service and a better product.” - Jim Mooney

"It's good to be informed on your competition. I don't want to ignore them, but I don't want to respond too strongly to them either." - Warren Lieberman

"We did a survey of 10,000 facilities on their pricing. We found out that two-thirds of those operators didn't change the price of a single unit of the course of a month." - Warren Lieberman

“Rate increases and value pricing are the number one ways to grow your revenue.” - Jim Mooney

"Tenants in more convenient units tend to be less price sensitive." - Warren Lieberman

"The size of the unit is only one aspect of what people are willing to pay for." - Warren Lieberman

Highlights

Foundational marketing strategies to have in place - whether leasing up or stabilized:

Website
Set up listings (Yelp, Google My Business, Apple Maps)
Social Media
Establish Local Partnerships

Lease up marketing strategies:

Lead Generating Strategies (like digital ads)
Aggregators (Sparefoot, Storagefront, etc.)
Awareness Campaigns (like billboards, flyers, and sponsorships)

Your average customer value
Find the average stay length of all tenants. Next take your economic occupancy and divide by how many units you have. That will tell you what the average customer pays.

Multiply the average length of stay by what the average customer pays, and that's the average value of a customer.

For example, if a customer stays for 12 months and pays $100 per month, then their value is $1,200.

Your average lead value

Figure out your closing rate (or conversion rate) i.e. how many leads do you turn into tenants? Multiply that by your average customer lifetime value to figure out what your leads are worth.

Pro Tip: see which lead sources are converting the best. It may be that certain sources have a higher conversion rate, so those leads are worth more to you than a source that barely converts.

Typical Lease-up timeline

According to our panelists, it's typical to see a 3-4% increase each month, putting your facility at 36% after the first year, and 72% after the second.

Alternately, you can look at your lease up goals through the lens of your units, aiming for 20 units rented per month.

For Nick and StorageMax, they pro forma their economic occupancy at 85% with their sweet spot at 92%.