SpareFoot Releases Free Tenant Value Calculator For Self-Storage Businesses

AUSTIN, TX., May 8, 2012— SpareFoot, the online self-storage marketplace, announced the release of a free Tenant Value Calculator. The new interactive tool empowers storage facility owners and operators to understand the lifetime value of a new tenant, giving them an idea of how much prospective tenants are worth. For the first time, storage businesses can instantly compute this analytic using their real numbers around rental rate, length of tenancy, and acquisition cost.

Brainchild of SpareFoot Account Manager Sara Richardson and built by Developer Evan Huston, the Tenant Value Calculator was created as a solution to a common problem for storage businesses— determining how much they should spend on marketing to earn ROI from every new tenant. It’s a notoriously tricky metric to determine, but essential to making informed marketing decisions.

“They’re exact calculations, down to the penny. You can use it to calculate the ROI for one specific person, or your average,” Huston explained.

The calculator adjusts in real-time based on user-entered data to reveal the date on which a storage facility can expect to profit from a new tenant. Two graphs illustrate revenue from a tenant over time. The calculator can also be used to compare the value of different marketing platforms, such as fliers or online efforts.

“I’m excited anyone can use it, even without being a client,” Richardson said. “It gives facilities an idea of what our company is about.”

The calculator was devised in one of SpareFoot’s company-wide, think-tank style Hack-A-Thons. At these monthly-ish events, any employee can pitch unique ideas for the development team to create outside of regular business operations.