Is your self storage organization leveraging its data to impact length of stay?
When disparate datasets are isolated instead of being integrated, it can be difficult to glean impactful insights.
Luckily, data science and data analytics are currently being leveraged to create solutions for some of the recurring challenges plaguing operators like length of stay, economic occupancy, and total occupancy.
Continue reading to learn:
Length of stay (LOS) is the estimate of how long a new customer will maintain a lease at a storage facility by analyzing historical records that detail customer move-ins and move-outs.
Dawson Weber, Director of Data Science at Linkmedia 360, breaks down LOS insights that have led to improved occupancy:
Does your self storage organization provide autopay features? From the analysis Dawson conducted, he learned that the renters who enrolled in autopay tended to stay far longer than the renters who didn’t.
If your self storage organization hasn’t considered implementing autopay features for customers, there could be a strategic opportunity to retain renters.
In terms of ROI, discounts are a cost-effective investment. The operator’s dataset Dawson measured showed that customers who rented a storage unit with a discount at the onset stayed 50% to 100% longer than those who don’t.
Storage customers who are mindful of the size of the unit they’ve rented, whether upgrading or downgrading the size of the unit, tend to also stay longer than customers who lease a unit at a fixed size and maintain that for the duration of the lease.
The insights shared above wouldn’t be possible without assessing all available datasets and exploring the conclusions that can be derived from that exploration. Data science can also be utilized to impact length of stay in the following ways:
During Dawson’s focused analysis of LOS, he isolated a single customer profile at a specific location and applied data science principles to track the events and variables impacting LOS, and how those variables ultimately impact total occupancy (storage unit space) and economic occupancy (the number of discounts being applied).
Beyond LOS, data science is driving insights that self storage operators need to utilize to truly solve some of the industry’s greatest recurrent challenges. Contact our team and we can apply a data-driven solution for your self storage organization.
