Last year optimizing our property performance was more important than ever. Our proven experience in the self-storage industry was a tremendous asset and helped us control costs and deliver the best possible results in our most difficult year on record. While the economy prompted a surge of move outs in the first half of the year, we relied on our real-time revenue management system to manage pricing and discounting strategies and rent our units at the highest possible rates.

To drive customers to our properties, we continued to leverage the power of the Internet. Just a few short years ago, Yellow Page advertising was our primary marketing tool, but now the paradigm has shifted almost completely. Today, the Yellow Pages are responsible for only 5% of our business, down from 50% in 2000, while the Internet is directly responsible for more than 25% of our customers and growing fast.

Our national scale gives us marketing muscle on the Internet, but last year we worked to further improve our search engine results. By analyzing search engine algorithms, we achieved better rankings in both paid and organic search. We designed our pay-per-click advertising campaigns to maximize “offline conversions” – those customers who research our facilities online and then rent by phone or in person at the site. In fact, the research firm Marketing Sherpa ranked our approach to offline conversions as one of the five best online marketing ideas of the year. Our growing Internet expertise is helping us spend our advertising dollars even more efficiently, giving us a distinct advantage over smaller operators.

To help us close every possible sale, we took full advantage of our new state-of-the-art call center. Since moving to an in-house call center in late 2008, we have seen our close rates increase by 109%. We attribute this impressive improvement to repetition, tighter scripting, higher call quality and our best-in-class technology. Our legacy of technology innovation has allowed us to tie everything together. Whether it is at the call center, on the Internet or at the site, Extra Space Storage has a technological platform that is second to none.