Southern Self Storage

Campaigns

Q1 Spring 2022 - Don’t Let Moving Drive You NUTS!

The busiest time of year for self-storage and moving companies is Lease-Up season. This starts towards the end of March and dies down toward the end of Summer. This is the peak season known in the business as Lease-Up Season or Spring Lease-Up Season, is when people move and that is due to the start of warmer weather. This campaign kicked off in March 2022.

Along with our catchy title and promotion, we offered healthy mixed nuts snacks for our customers to keep up their energy during what could be a busy day of moving in or out of a home. With the play on words of nuts with crazy but also nuts as in snacks, I used the shape of a peanut in my designs and used fun colors but stayed close to the Southern Self Storage blue as the most prominent color.

I designed all the marketing materials, digital and print, and ordered them to be able to reach 45 storage facilities across the country and in Puerto Rico. I coordinated with district managers to ensure all facilities received their marketing materials promptly before the start of our Spring Campaign. I made a teaser to hint about a special campaign coming soon that was shared through our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Google). In select cities, we ran print ads to drive demand.

Q1 Valentine’s 2023 - Share The Love & Refer Us!

For our 2023 Valentine’s Day campaign, we focused on our existing tenants to bring in new potential customers by making a referral campaign. We already had a referral offer but during this time we offered a bigger discount for existing tenants’ next month’s rent. Meanwhile, the incoming customer would receive the same discount on their first month.

The title for this VDay campaign comes from the idea of sharing love and sharing your referral. I designed the referral cards, social media graphics, and the email we sent out company-wide. I made English and Spanish versions for our Puerto Rico stores. I ordered all the materials and exported our tenants’ email addresses as well as scheduled emails to go out for almost 3 weeks.

Q2 May 2023 - May Moving Month!

May was declared national moving month by Allied in 1997 because it’s the busiest time of year for real estate businesses and movers. So for the month of May we offered a little something to help out the movers! We offered a moving kit which in total was 25% off the same items bought together at any other time.

We got the managers involved by having them set up displays in their leasing offices of what was offered in our moving kit. Not all storage facilities are built the same, especially at Southern Self Storage which buys pre-built facilities. We sent out two guides for the merchandise display, one for smaller offices and one for larger ones.

I made the social media graphics to post and for the Facebook cover as well a different design to pop out more on the website. I also made a short video for YouTube to be used as an ad and a reel size video for social.

Q3 Summer 2023 - Customer Appreciation Mini Campaign

One of the goals of any creative, is to keep things fresh and being innovative. Though not a new concept, for our Summer Customer Appreciation, we used scratch-off tickets! We gave our customers the opportunity to have fun with a game of chance.

We knew we wanted there to be a way for our tenants to win, something fun and interactive. With this goal in mind, I looked for what was feasible, quick to put into action from my end and easy for the managers to execute, especially those with over 1,000 units to manage.

So what did they get? Scratch-off winners got a discount on their next month’s rent and all of the winners were put into a raffle to win a gift card. We ran this contest for a week.

As with other materials, we made an English version for our stores in the states and a Spanish version for our Puerto Rico stores.

Challenges:

Order materials for 50 facilities spread out across the country is not always easy but I found an inexpensive solution that would get to every facility in time from Arizona to Puerto Rico. I collaborated with the district managers that needed to hand deliver their materials, such as in Puerto Rico. Through trial and error it was through this and past campaigns that I learned the best way to deliver materials to all stores.

This was a challenge because my goals are to get the managers their materials in time and find the most cost effective way to do so. There are 5 district managers but some DMs have majority of their stores in Florida with some in New Mexico or their facilities are over 3 hours away by car. In the past I would communicate with the DMs first to ensure they would get the materials before they did their store visits but this did not always work out. Thanks for free shipping, another time I was able to deliver the items to all the stores directly, but in Puerto Rico this is a little difficult and not all materials made able to be delivered.

After everything, I found the write formula for ordering. For certain stores I would have items sent directly to them or mailed to our office and I could mail them out. And for Puerto Rico, I would send things to a central store that both DMs have easy access to.

Q4 November 2023 to December 2023 - The Gift Of Storage

During the season of giving, we allowed our tenants to share a special referral discount with their friends and families. I made seasonal referral cards in both English and Spanish and we promoted this holiday campaign through social media.

The holidays are a slower time of year for storage. This is due to the colder weather, and with the holidays, people are spending time with family, planning trips or hosting, and do not have the time to move or even move things into a storage unit. Money is going towards sales and holiday gifts and not into a new storage unit. So during times like these where our demand is lower, we focus on our current tenants’ word of mouth and building brand loyalty.

Q4 December 2023 to January 2024 - Boxing Day

Though not celebrated in the United States, it was a play on words too easy not to take advantage of. Plus Southern Self Storage owners are Canadians, so if anyone asks, we did it for them.

Our after-Christmas, after-New Year’s packing supplies sale came at the perfect time for people who need boxes to pack away their holiday supplies and decor or for those who want to do some purging and decluttering for the new year.

Q1 February 2024 - Sweet Savings

For our 2024 Valentine’s Day, we had a sweet savings for new customers. I designed “Valentine’s Day cards” that would hold a strawberries and cream heart-shaped lollipops. Managers then would deliver these cards to apartment complexes, relators’ offices, and other destinations approved by their district managers where it could get to potential tenants. Being a company-wide campaign, I made an English and Spanish version. I also organized the shipments and distributions of the cards and lollipops, including ordering cards and lollipops for me to count and send out to specific stores. With the help of the managers and district managers everyone received their cards and candy before February 1st.

Raffles & Giveaways

Q3 2022 - Labor Day Giveaway

My first giveaway with the company was our Labor Day Giveaway. We wanted to give back to the hard workers and kicked off this contest right after Labor Day.

The goal of this social media contest was to get more activity, likes, and follows on our Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. The prize was a whopping $1,200 Hotel.com gift card. We chose a Hotels.com gift card because, after a few years of staying home, the travel buzz was in everyone’s ear, even if it meant flying with a mask on.

Now, even though Southern Self Storage has a main Facebook page, each individual store has its own page. So though there were multiple ways to enter, we gave each store a flyer with a QR code to their individual Facebook page. This way, most people who enter online could click a link to enter any or all ways but those who stop by the stores are more likely to like the store’s Facebook page which has fewer likes and follows than the main page, thus bringing activity to all social media accounts.

Q2 2023 - Grocery Giveaway!

At a time when the price of eggs skyrocketed and was being compared all across social media, we saw the challenges people were facing and found the prize for a contest we wanted to run. This contest was available to any new tenants, anyone to rent a unit from March 27th to April 8th. We had one winner of $150 gift card to a local grocery store in each region including Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, and New Mexico.

To give this campaign a boost and add a special touch to the leasing offices, we sent acrylic balloon stands, as well as white, green, and gold with white dollar sign balloons. These balloon stands were also a cheap investment that can be used for future campaigns and contests.

Outside of designing all the marketing materials, and printing out and mailing flyers to individual stores and groups by city, I coordinated with the DMs the best time to have the balloon stands delivered for distribution. On top of that, to avoid any potential user error, I created an easy How-To video for anyone who might have questions and got everyone excited about what was on the way! To see the mini-promo reel click here.

I gave updates to both DMs and managers along the way. In the end, we chose winners at random, I notified all the stores and then contacted the managers of the winners’ stores to find the best solutions for gift cards, whether that meant the manager needed it ordered, they could physically pick it up, or their District Manager purchased it.

Giving Back To The Community

Back To School Supply Drive

Every year, Southern Self Storage gives back to the local communities our facilities reside. We reach out to the property managers and let them choose what organization they want to partner with or donate to, including schools, food banks, and other non-profits. We support them with social media and by creating flyers for their stores.

Additionally, every year for our back-to-school drive we donate as a company to every participating store. I work with the managers to find the best solutions to contribute the most we can within our budget. Below are the back-to-school drive’s flyer designs for 2022 and 2023.

Food Drive & Toy Drive

During the holidays, we encourage managers to host a food or toy drive. Every manager’s community involvement varies based on their personality and the city or town the facility is in. The managers that do want to collect food or toys then choose an organization to give their donations to and I in turn customize the company-wide flyer to include the store’s information and the organization they chose.