Self Storage newsletters

Many self storage companies publish electronic newsletters. Is it time well spent? What kind of newsletters work well? And what is the best strategy for releasing them?

Make them welcome

In principle, newsletters are a great idea. They tell the public about your activities, and about your business. They can bring a personal touch to those empty industrial corridors of self storage.

But electronic newsletters are competing for attention with a mass of other information that comes streaming into everyone’s email accounts every day. How do you get your newsletters read?

Effective newsletters should:

• appeal directly to a target readership;
• be short and to the point;
• look attractive;
• appear only infrequently

Model newsletters

The trouble is that newsletters often take rather longer to write and construct than you would ever imagine. And their effectiveness is very hard to quantify. The long-in-the-tooth age of some self storage newsletters displayed online is probably a testament to good intentions that have lapsed.

Nonetheless, the examples of good newsletters show what can be achieved, and how they might appeal to readers and customers. One of the best examples is published by SupaStorage, Wimbledon. Their newsletters carry competitions (always a good way to draw in readers), photographs of staff and other images, and some additional information about their self storage services.

There is also a note about SupaStorage’s charitable work, such as offering free storage space to Unique (The Rare Chromosome Disorder Support Group). All in all, the newsletters put SupaStorage in a good light: friendly, informative, and brief (the total length of the newsletter is about the same as two A4 pages).

Mid Wales Storage takes a slightly different approach, with longer articles on more general themes (e.g. choosing an estate agent), and local news stories – taking up the opportunity to appeal directly to a distinct customer base.

A more traditional newsletter style is adopted by U Can Store It of the West Midlands: two A4 sheets presenting storage tips, special offers and staff profiles. Because they fall outside the main interface of a website, newsletters offer the opportunity to introduce staff to customers in an informal way, usefully putting faces to the business.

Online access

All the above newletters can be viewed directly online, from Google pages or from links within the company websites. Email alerts to customer mailing lists can signal the publication of any new newsletter and direct readers to the link.

Many other companies have newsletters that can be viewed only by subscribers. This has the advantage that the newsletter is mailed only to readers who have requested it, and so rules out the danger of a nuisance email – with your name on it – arriving in a client’s in-box.

Would-be subscribers sign up simply by supplying an email address, which goes into an automated confirmation system. Of course subscribers will probably suspect a hidden agenda: by signing up, they are also becoming part of an address list.

For that reason, many companies wisely attach a reassuring notice like this one on the newsletter subscription page for ABC Selfstore: “This is a low volume newsletter and you can opt-out at any time… We hate spam as much as you do and we’ll never give or sell your email address to third parties.”

Wolverhampton Self Storage uses this wording “If you would like to join our mailing list and also receive our newsletters please complete the boxes below and click submit… Privacy Policy. Here at Wolverhampton Self Storage our customers’ privacy is a top priority, therefore we DO NOT pass on any of our customers’ private details to third parties or other organisations.”

Of course a self storage company can invite subscribers AND publish newsletters online: they are not mutually exclusive. If you do that, then potential subscribers will have the opportunity to see what they are going to get – and you may well earn more subscribers that way.

Free newsletter templates

It is easy enough to create a smart-looking newsletter. Just Google “free newsletter template” and a long list of websites will appear, including sites like CampaignMonitor.