Digital Marketing

Marketing continues to evolve in the digital era, and Extra Space is equipped to stay ahead of the curve. With an ever-evolving digital marketing strategy, Extra Space identifies high quality prospective customers and guides them to lease at a property, at a low cost per acquisition. The team’s experience in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, website optimization, social media marketing, and brand management all drive customers to Extra Space. Customers can then rent a unit online, over the phone with the call-center, or in-person with the store team. The team has a unified focus on a seamless omnichannel approach to meet customers wherever they want and to give them the customer experience that best fits their needs.

National Solutions Center

The Extra Space team includes 250+ employees as part of the National Solutions Center. The National Solutions Center is an expanded call-center that handles customer acquisition through phone calls, website chats, and social media messaging. In an increasingly mobile world, the National Solutions Center allows customers to do business with real agents in real time. The team uses proprietary software to assist with renting units, as well as helping current customers have a great experience with the team. This makes interacting with Extra Space efficient and positive for customers.

Customer Experience

Extra Space’s 2+ million customers interact with the company through just about every channel imaginable. Whether a customer starts their journey with a Google Ad, a TikTok, by dialing the call center, or driving by a property – Extra Space offers a positive and consistent customer experience. Every employee is trained to prioritize caring for customers, showing them appreciation for their business, and keeping them well informed. The Extra Space team listens to customers and is empowered to meet their needs on the first interaction.

Multi-Brand Approach

Following the merger with Life Storage, Extra Space has decided to test a multi-brand approach. This means that instead of rebranding all Life Storage properties to the Extra Space brand, the company is testing having both Life Storage and Extra Space branded properties in some of the same markets. This follows best practices from industries like hospitality or rental cars but is a first in the self storage industry. The team hopes to see positive digital marketing synergies from having multiple brand placements in Google’s mapping tools and search engine results. Regardless, customers can expect the same great service from the same great team at any property with any brand in the Extra Space family of brands.

Data Science and Revenue Management

Data Science

Extra Space has the reputation of being the industry’s technology leader, especially leading in the area of data science. Leaders at the company consult data for nearly every decision, and leverage that data to drive company strategy. As the largest self storage company, Extra Space has a significant scale advantage in data science, since the team has more transaction data to access. At Extra Space, everything will be A/B tested, analyzed, and improved with help from the experienced data scientists on the team.

Revenue Management

Extra Space’s pricing is driven by a proprietary revenue management system that is constantly refined through testing and optimization. Property occupancy levels, customer length of stay, market data, customer data, and historical data all combine to help drive rates, discounts, and advertising strategies. These strategies are specific to each market, property, and even unit type and are updated in real time as new information enters the platform. This is all possible due to the sophisticated systems built and tested by the Revenue Management team, and are enhanced by Extra Space’s scale, which allows the company to run statistically significant tests quickly due to its large customer base. Extra Space uses these tools to maximize revenue at each of the 3,700+ properties across the portfolio and utilizing the multiple brands.

Cybersecurity

The Extra Space IT security team continuously improves practices for information security, protection of data /annualreport/2023/assets, and staying up-to-date with consumer privacy regulations. Extra Space audits security practices regularly to ensure the company stays at the forefront of cybersecurity standards. The team has the full support of the board of directors and management to continue to invest in improvements and make regular updates to advance the company’s security initiatives.