Devon Self Storage released an operations update covering the company’s performance during the first six months of 2010 in its first-ever quarterly newsletter. Written by Angus Morrison, senior vice president of operations, the update covers company expansion, occupancy, rental-inquiry activity, Website activity, marketing efforts, closing ratios and more.
 
From Jan. 1 through June 30, Devon added three third-party management sites to its portfolio and successfully integrated a larger 10-property portfolio into the company.
 
The company’s facilities gained a combined 66,198 square feet of net occupancy through the end of June. Devon Self Storage was also able to raise posted rents by nearly 8 percent and successfully restarted existing-tenant rent increases.
 
Rental-inquiry activity was fairly strong, with some regional exceptions, according to the update. The company’s 46 self-storage facilities received more than 16,948 inquiries in the first six months of the year. Devon Self Storage continues to see an increase in Web-based inquiries.
 
Devonselfstorage.com received 42,395 unique visits in the first half of the year, with 7,542 visits in June alone. Of the site’s visitors, more than 6,705 called a facility, 1,436 printed promotional move-in coupons, and 2,979 requested quotes. Overall, the company’s facilities had a total tracked-inquiry closing percentage of 46.7 percent. Of the closed leads, 80.3 percent were from walk-ins, 41.1 were from direct calls to facilities, and 24.3 percent were from the call center.
 
Devon Self Storage continues to focus on SEO (search engine optimization) and pay-per-click marketing. Yellow Pages, while a declining overall source of leads, is still a significant generator of activity, with more than 6,056 tracked calls from the first six months of the year for those sites with tracking phone numbers. Morrison said the company expects Internet leads to cost about $8 per lead depending on the market, while Yellow Page leads can cost $40 or more. For this reason, the company continues to strategically reduce Yellow Page expenditures while increasing its online focus.
 
The Devon operations team is led by April Noel, Jim Mooney, Michael Vinciguerra, Jerry Ostach and Jacob Steele.

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