Extra Space Storage owns and operates over 1,100 self-storage properties across the US and Puerto Rico, offering storage units to customers. The company saw its highest occupancy rates in 2015. Extra Space Storage uses data-driven email marketing to provide personalized, contextual messages to its growing base of over 1.3 million subscribers. Partnering with StrongView, Extra Space Storage improved its email marketing capabilities, gaining support for massive data handling and mobile optimization. This resulted in a 50% increase in email conversion rates and a 23% rise in rentals via mobile devices.

1. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Extra Space Storage Inc. owns or
operates 1,146 self-storage properties in 35 states, Washington, D.C.
and Puerto Rico. The company’s properties comprise about 775,000
units and 85 million square feet of rentable storage space, offering
customers secure storage units across the country, including boat
storage, RV storage, and business storage. In 2015, the company’s
occupancy rate reached its highest levels ever.
“We have a lot of customers who are going through transitional periods in their life –
whether it’s a divorce, or they’re moving, or there’s been a change in their life,” said
Jennifer Stamper, Interactive Marketing Manager at Extra Space Storage. “Those are
the times when people come to rely on storage.”
Because Extra Space Storage’s customers are typically in the midst of a life change,
the company’s mission is customer satisfaction first.
This means communicating with customers via highly personalized and contextual
emails. Depending on where someone is in the customer lifecycle, Extra Space may
send an email with packing tips, moving truck tips or reservation reminders. The
company also segments email based on move-in dates and personality types –
people who plan a move far in advance and those who make last-minute reservations.
In fact, the company has grown its email marketing initiative to as many as 1.3 million
personalized email sends each month.
“We want to be very customer centric,” said Stamper. “No matter if people are just
remodeling or if they are divorcing, we want to be a brand that cares. We want to take
care of our customers and the personal belongings that matter to them. People don’t
always know what they’re doing when they get storage. We want to help them.”
Big Data Drives Big Ambitions
In 2013, Extra Space Storage felt they needed better email marketing capabilities
to improve how they were engaging a growing customer base. Their number of
subscribers was growing and so was the amount of data the company was capturing
from subscribers. As an added challenge, Stamper is solely responsible for the
company’s email marketing.
“We had worked with a couple of big-name ESPs, but felt that we needed more support,”
said Stamper. This was particularly important, as I managed all email campaigns myself.
We needed an ESP that would offer more support, could seamlessly handle massive
amounts of data, and also provide tools to help us stay highly relevant to customers
and communicate with them contextually.”
“Data is everything for Extra Space,” she said. “We want to provide the best content
we can to our customers, and we want to make sure that it’s applicable.”
However, in order to effectively achieve that goal, the company needed more and
better support from their email service provider.
Contextual Lifecycle Marketing Boosts Rentals Via Mobile Email by 23%
EXTRA SPACE STORAGE CASE STUDY
www.ExtraSpace.com
Industry
Self Storage
Properties
1,200
Employees
2,000
Key Benefits
>> Ability to use vast amounts of data
in customer-centric communications
>> Automated, contextual emails
to 650,000 subscribers
>> Mobile optimized email
communications based on device
Return on Investment
>> 50% jump in email-attributed
conversion rate
>> 23% increase in rentals via
mobile devices
Products and Services
>> StrongView Message Studio
>> StrongView Lifecycle Marketing Module
>> Marketing Services

2. Improved Support and Mobile Optimization
After evaluating multiple enterprise-level email service providers in Fall 2013, Extra Space
Storage found that StrongView was the right partner to help them transform their email
communications with contextual relevance. “For us, the support they offered was so
important,” said Stamper. “We didn’t have that with other vendors.”
For example, StrongView and Extra Space Storage’s data team collaborated to
automate daily email list scrubs based on data collected from each subscriber.
The automated process cleans the email list based on customers who have
moved in or out and removes anyone with spam complaints. A fresh list
is then delivered every morning into Message Studio, StrongView’s cross-
channel messaging platform.
“We are very integrated with our data,” said Stamper. “By allowing us to pull
all of our data into Message Studio, StrongView has enabled us to target and
segment in ways that we haven’t been able to do before.”
When Extra Space Storage launched a mobile website in April 2014,
StrongView again proved to be a valuable partner. StrongView worked with
Extra Space Storage to ensure that all email templates were optimized for
mobile and that the company implemented SMS marketing to communicate
with customers.
“Before StrongView, we weren’t even thinking about mobile marketing tools
like SMS,” she said. “StrongView approached us with innovative ideas and said
things like, ‘you guys need to get your email templates mobile responsive’
and ‘you’re doing great, but you could also be doing this.’ StrongView comes
to us with strategic improvements, and that’s helped us take our email and
mobile marketing to the next level.”
Enhanced Lifecycle Marketing
Leveraging StrongView’s marketing services, mobile optimization features,
Lifecycle Marketing Module (LCM), and seamless handling of big data, Extra
Space Storage amplified their lifecycle marketing capability.
“StrongView’s Lifecycle Marketing Module is the one piece that has changed
the way we do email marketing,” said Stamper. “Before StrongView, we
weren’t able to build customer experiences for our clients. After using
StrongView’s Lifecycle Marketing Module, we’ve been able to build and
segment our customers in new and more powerful ways.”
“Lifecycle automation is absolutely critical for us,” she said. “I am a one-
person email team, so the ability to completely automate all of our emails
using StrongView’s LCM is extremely critical. It helps us communicate to our
customers with messages that matter to them, while still having bandwidth
to create new campaigns.”
Extra Space Storage clients receive personalized and highly
relevant emails.

3. Big Results
Upon commencing with StrongView, Extra Space Storage experienced
a 50 percent jump in its attributed conversion rate for email. “For 2014,
when we looked at our results with StrongView versus our results in
the previous year, the attributed conversion rate back to email jumped
50 percent,” said Stamper. “We’ve never had that before.”
Additionally, the company saw a 23 percent increase in rentals via
mobile devices. “We are all about ‘mobile domination,’” said Stamper.
“We experienced a 23 percent increase in rentals following our mobile
site launch. We did not see a decrease in desktop rentals, so this is a
brand new audience.”
Stamper credits the success to several factors, including the company’s
decision to become more mobile minded. This new focus helped
drive a new streamlined mobile website and responsive design email
templates to optimize the mobile experience throughout the customer
communication cycle.
StrongView’s designers worked closely with Extra Space Storage to
create a new mobile friendly design for its email communications
that embraced best practices for engagement and ease of use.
Next, StrongView coded the email templates with responsive
design techniques to ensure that they offered a consistent customer
experience across devices. “We know the mobile visitors wouldn’t
convert at the same rate if we didn’t send the mobile responsive
emails,” she said.
Stamper also credits StrongView with providing guidance about
innovations in email marketing, tools to handle the amount of
data that pours in from its subscribers, tools to use that data in
relevant and contextual ways, and strategic support to execute
campaigns successfully.
“Our jump in attributed conversion rate is definitely a result of becoming
mobile responsive, but also StrongView’s ability to handle data,” said
Stamper. “There were breaks in the process before we began working
with StrongView.”
With StrongView’s mobile responsive email templates,
clients began renting via mobile devices.

4. ABOUT
STRONGVIEW
StrongView helps brands
understand, engage, and deliver
value to consumers. Recognized
as a leading provider of email and
cross-channel marketing solutions,
StrongView is reinventing customer
relationship marketing through
customer context. Our contextual
marketing solutions enable brands
to recognize and act on consumers’
fast-changing circumstances before,
during, and after each moment
of engagement.
Based in Redwood City, CA,
and backed by leading investors,
StrongView seeks to challenge
traditional marketing approaches
and enable customer context as a
new foundation for delivering value.
Learn more at:
StrongView.com
twitter.com/StrongView
facebook.com/StrongViewInc
StrongView
1300 Island Drive, Suite 200
Redwood City, CA 94065
P 650-421-4200
F 650-421-4201
SV010815
Copyright © 2015 StrongView Systems, Inc.
STRONGVIEW and the STRONGVIEW logo are
registered trademarks in the United States, other
countries or both. All Rights Reserved.
StrongView Systems UK, Ltd is a company registered
in England and Wales at 5 New Street Square, London
EC4A 3TW. Reg. No. 6398867. VAT # GB 925 07 6228.
Trading Address: 36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
United Kingdom.
Bottom Line
For Extra Space Storage, having marketing support, the ability to handle large
amounts of data, seamless automation, and mobile optimization are critical
for successfully maintaining a large-scale email marketing initiative with
limited resources.
“I would strongly encourage people to look at StrongView’s Lifecycle Marketing
Module and the company’s ability to use data to effectively segment customers,”
said Stamper. “The tool is by far the most powerful one I have used. It’s
empowered us with better contextual and relevant email marketing – and I have
complete faith that it will send my customers the right message at the right time.”
Stamper continues, “With StrongView, there are a lot of opportunities to grow
our business.”
About StrongView Lifecyle Marketing
With StrongView’s Lifecycle Marketing solution, marketers can design powerful
multi-step communication flows using an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface.
Progressive profiles with both behavioral and psychographic data are built over
a period of weeks and months to provide a massive treasure chest of actionable
information. With this unlimited understanding of a customer’s current state,
marketers can then build a truly personalized and rewarding customer experience,
while ensuring delivery of highly relevant and anticipated communications.
Drive more value from your programs and increased customer lifetime value
with real-time path optimization capabilities.
“For 2014, when we looked at our results with StrongView
versus our results in the previous year, the attributed
conversion rate back to email jumped 50 percent.
We’ve never had that before.”
Jennifer Stamper, Interactive Marketing Manager, Extra Space Storage