At times, one of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks a storage site will need to undertake is getting leads for new customers. Even getting names into a database (that you can then market to) can be tricky… but by offering an incentive, you can make the data-gathering process much easier.
Take Australia’s popular ‘Flybuys’ shopping rewards program as a case in point. While you (eventually) get to spend your points on ‘free’ appliances or furniture, the company behind the program gets all of your marketing information – they know your income, age, what brands you buy, where you buy it, and how much you spend on it (data which can then be on-sold to marketing companies). Most people are comfortable with this – otherwise they would not have signed up for the rewards program in the first place. So why not do the same with self storage?
Offering a discount
Offering a discount towards storage fees whenever a non-storer buys merchandise items (such as boxes, tape, etc) is an easy way to do this. For example, set up a system whereby those that spend more than, say, $100 on merchandise items, get $5 off the merchandise price and another $20 off their storage fees for them or a friend if they come and store with you (to be used within the next year). Of course, the trade-off would be that you get to ask for some of their details for marketing purposes. Naturally, one would rephrase this – but the tools are all there in Storman to let you do this.
Rather than sell the merchandise as a Cash Sale, sell the items as an Other Credit Sale (off the Accounting menu). This lets you keep a credit for the storage incentive on file, and allows you to store some information about the customer – such as name, address, email, etc – which you can then market to with Storman’s built-in email and / or print merge functions.
Buy ‘selling’ the incentive to the customer in a positive light, you get around the potential roadblock of a customer releasing their address details to you. Start by informing the customer that if they spend more than $100 on merchandise, they’ll get $X off their purchase and a discount voucher for $XX off storage. If they’re interested, ask them for a few address details to put on the file ‘for the discount offer’.
Process it as an Other Credit Sale in Storman One and add a rental fee credit for $X for the rental discount. The credit will remain on file against their name until you choose to remove it – perhaps a year from now, if that’s how long you decide to hold the discount offer for that customer. To make things easier for the customer, write down their Storman customer code on a promo flyer and say it’s a ‘discount coupon code’. Explain to the customer they may get an email or mail flyer from you once in a while, finish the merchandise sale, and there you go!
Someone who has just bought some boxes from you is now a potential storage lead, and they’ve got all of the ammunition in their hand to come in and do it… at a bit of a discount, yes – but you didn’t have to do much work to get the lead, and they’re now in your system as someone who you can market to, using Storman’s built-in marketing tools.
And besides – they may never use the discount… but at least if they DO ever want to store something, they’re going to come to you first, in order to use their voucher. Happy selling!
