Enabling advanced Rental Promotions settings allows you to apply further customization to your rental discounts. Your advanced Rental Promotions settings aid you in gaining new tenants by offering prospective customers an attractive discount through 3rd party marketing platforms. Additionally, using advanced promotions enables you to apply promotions only to units that meet specific criteria that you set. This functionality allows you to auto-apply promotions to new rentals, base promotions on occupancy and other criteria, and prioritize which promotions are applied to a rental when more than one promotion meets the criteria you’ve set for it.

This guide is intended to help you:

• Set up and apply controls to promotions
• Display promotions through 3rd party marketing channels
• Troubleshoot your rental promotions

⚠ Turning on Advanced Promotions will change your Units page on the facility level of your software. The Standard Rate column will be replaced with a Promotions column so you can easily see which unit groups have applicable promotions. You will need to hover over a unit with your cursor to see its standard or managed rate.

Set up and apply controls to promotions

Your controls are the criteria you set for your promotions. They help you ensure that your promotions are only applicable to the units you choose. Once you set up a control, you can apply your control to a promotion immediately by editing a promotion and adding that control. You can read about how to create a new promotion or edit an existing promotion on our help site.

Setting up controls

To set up controls, access your rental promotions. Once you have advanced rental promotions turned on, you’ll see a Controls tab. Access your Controls tab and select Create New Control.

There are a variety of controls to choose from:

Unit Controls

✅ Pro tip: Before creating controls for your promotions, run your Consolidated Occupancy report. That way, you have details about all of your unit groups readily available to consult while you’re editing your controls and promotions.

• Floor: Adding a Floor control allows you to apply promotions to units on a specific floor of a multi-level facility. This helps you make units on various floors more appealing to customers by giving them a promotional price for those units.
• Unit Type: Adding a Unit Type control allows you to ensure that a particular promotion can only be applied to that unit type. For example, selecting Parking Space means that promotions using that control can only be used for parking spaces. Your software will pull any unit type you have entered in your software into this section.
• Unit Amenities: Adding Unit Amenities as a control enables you to apply promotions only to rentals with specific amenities. However, you must select all amenities that a rental has attached to it in your software for it to be applicable to that particular rental. For that reason we do not recommend you use Unit Amenities as a control. Unit Amenities Include (below) is a more usable choice.
• Unit Amenities Include: Setting a control with Unit Amenities Include allows you to apply promotions to units with specific amenities. For example, if you select Light in Unit, any unit that has a light can be included in the promotion, regardless of its other amenities. Use this control if you plan to select only one amenity.
• Unit Amenities Any: You can add unlimited amenities to one control using this option, but be mindful that if you add more than one amenity, your promotion will only be applicable to units that have all of the amenities you’ve added to this control. Use this control if you want to apply a promotion to units with multiple amenities.
• Unit Size: The Unit Size control enables you to apply promotions only to rentals of a specific size range. This control is calculated by square footage. Consult your Consolidated Occupancy report to have your unit measurements on hand. For example, if you set a control that is for unit sizes between 100 and 200, that promotion can be applied to your 10x10 (100 sq ft), 10x15 (150 sq ft), and 10x20 (200 sq ft) units, but cannot be applied to 5x10 (50 sq ft) or 10x30 (300 sq ft) units because they don’t fall within the selected range.
  • > greater than: If you want the promotion to apply only to units larger than 10x10 (100 sq ft), for example, you would enter > greater than 100.
  • < less than: If you want your promotion to apply only to units smaller than 10x20 (200 sq ft), for example, you would enter < less than 200.
  • between: Using between, you can set up a size range for the units that can be rented with the promotion.

  Occupancy Controls

• Unit Occupancy Percent: Setting up a Unit Occupancy Percent control allows you to set a specific occupancy range for your promotion. You can set up your range to be greater than, less than, or between specific occupancy percentages. Unit Occupancy Percent applies to unit groups and is independent of overall facility occupancy percentages. For example, setting up a control that applies a promotion to units between 25% and 50% ensures that it can only be applied when a unit group is between (and including) 25-50% occupancy.  If the unit group is at 51% occupancy, the promotion with this control cannot be applied.
• Facility Occupancy Percent: Using Facility Occupancy Percent as a control ensures your promotion is applied only when your entire facility’s occupancy is greater than or less than a particular occupancy percentage, or within a specific range (by using between). This is based on overall occupancy at your facility, regardless of the occupancy of your various unit groups.
• Vacancy Count: Using Vacancy Count as a control ensures that a promotion can only be applied when at least a specific number of units are available.

• Once you have selected your control, click Save. Once saved, it will appear on the Promotions tab and be applicable to promotions.

  Applying controls to promotions

  You can apply a control to a promotion when you are creating a new promotion or editing an existing promotion. You’ll see a section at the bottom of the page labeled Controls.

  

  You have three default controls, followed by the custom controls that you’ve created. The default controls are:

• Auto-apply and Prioritize: Using this control ensures that you will be able to:
  • Automatically apply your promotion to rentals that meet your other promotion criteria
  • Ensure that your promotion appears through any 3rd parties you selected when creating the promotion
  • Assign a priority to your promotion

• 📖 See below for more information about Auto-apply and Prioritize.

• Move-in Only: Using this control ensures that your promotion can only be applied to new rentals.
• Existing Tenant Only: Using this control ensures that only tenants who are already renting from your facility can receive the promotion.

Display promotions through 3rd party marketing channels

Your advanced rental promotions allow you to select which of your promotions are displayed across various 3rd parties. In order for your promotion to display through a 3rd party, you must have the API for that 3rd party enabled in your software.

📖 You can read more about 3rd party integrations on our help site.

Select channels for your promotion

Before your promotion will appear anywhere publicly on the web, you must select where you’d like it to display. When creating or editing a promotion, you can select the 3rd party you’d like to receive the promotion under the Channel heading.

3rd parties with which you’ve integrated will appear in this list, including but not limited to storEDGE APIs.

After you’ve saved a promotion that you’ve set to display through a 3rd party, you can expect it to take 20 minutes to 4 hours (depending on the 3rd party) for the promotion to display.

Auto-apply and prioritize your promotion

In order for your promotion to display through a 3rd party, you must also check the box next to Auto-apply and prioritize in the Controls table when you’re editing or creating a new promotion and enter a priority. 3rd parties will display the highest priority promotion, and the lowest value will be the highest priority. When you select this option, several things happen:

• Your promotion will display through the 3rd parties you’ve selected
• Your promotion will be applied to units that meet its criteria automatically through the Rental Center, online move-ins, and within your software at move-in. This means you won’t have to manually apply a promotion to a unit - the software will do it for you.

About prioritization

There are times when you may have several different promotions that could be applied to the same unit group. The promotion with the highest priority will be applied and shown on your website.

⚠ If you have two promotions with the same priority number entered, only one of them will appear on your website. The promotion that was entered into your software first will appear, and the other promotion will not appear.

How your promotion will display on your storEDGE marketing website

If you have your software set to display your promotion on your website and auto-apply, you’ll see the public description you’ve entered for the promotion below the unit amenity details along with its expiration date. Only the promotion with the highest priority will be auto-applied and shown on your website.

⚠ If your promotion is a rate modification (recurring price change), then the rate for the unit will be crossed out and replaced with the new calculated rate.

How your promotion will appear in the Rental Center

Your promotion will automatically apply in the Rental Center. Coupons will display to show that the promotions have been applied.

How your promotions will be applied at move-in from your software

Only non-recurring promotions will auto-apply when you move in a tenant from your software. Tenants can still receive recurring promotions, but you’ll need to select that promotion from the drop-down.

Troubleshoot your rental promotions

Your rental promotions functionality is very useful and robust, but it’s also very sensitive. There are a variety of factors that can prevent your promotion from displaying through a 3rd party or prevent it from applying to a rental as expected. However, there are several factors you can double-check to ensure that the functionality works as planned.

My promotion is not appearing on my website.

Find your promotion and select Edit. Check to ensure that:

• Hide from API is not checked.
• Auto-apply and Prioritize is checked and a priority has been entered.
• The correct channel is selected.
• The correct facility is selected.

Additionally, find your promotion in your promotions list and ensure that it’s turned on.

A tenant made a reservation during a promotional period. Now the promotion is not applying to the unit.

There are several things you can do:

• Duplicate the promotion without auto-apply (so it doesn’t appear on your website) and apply it at move-in.
• Edit the promotion and extend its ending date.

⚠ Keep in mind that other users will be able to see and apply your promotion if you extend its ending date.

I want my promotion to be displayed on my website, but I don’t want it to auto-apply when a tenant moves in through the Rental Center. What can I do?

• Do not use Channels or Auto-apply and Prioritize.
• Edit a coupon that appears on your website with your promotion details. Make sure to add the Promo code.
• When a tenant moves in via Rental Center, the promotion will only apply if a tenant enters the promo code.

⚠ If you use the coupon method, occupancy-based controls will not work. Additionally, you cannot use both methods concurrently - you must use auto-applied promotions or coupon-based promotions.

I want more than one promotion to auto-apply to a unit group. Can I do this?

No, only one promotion (with the highest priority) will be applied per unit group. 

I want one promotion for 10x10 climate-controlled units to appear on my website, but I want a different promotion for 10x10 climate-controlled units to be available during move-in at my facility. How can I do this?

You will need to make two duplicate promotions with the some controls. For the promotion you’d like to appear on your website, ensure that your website is selected as a channel and that Auto-apply and Prioritize is added as a control. For the promotion you’d like to apply in person at your facility, just ensure that Auto-apply and Prioritize is off.

Why aren’t promotions showing in the dropdown when I move a tenant in at my facility?

If your promotions are using the Auto-apply and Prioritize control, your promotion is not appearing because 1) It has already been automatically applied to the applicable unit or 2) The promotion has a control attached that deems it inapplicable to the unit.

My promotion is showing on my website, but my tenant said the promotion wasn’t applying with an online move-in.

Check your promotion and ensure that you’ve selected both your website and Rental Center as 3rd party channels. That way, the promotions will be sent through both channels.

I don’t want my promotion to appear on my website until a future date.

Create your promotion, but turn it off. When you want your promotion to start appearing on your website, go in and turn it on.

Can I auto-apply promotions to transfers?

Promotions will not auto-apply to transfers. However, if the promotion is applicable to the unit a tenant is transferring to and the promotion has not expired, you can select promotions from the drop-down at transfer.

Can my tenant keep a promotion when transferring to a new unit?

Yes! The ability to move a promotion to a new unit in the event of a transfer is controlled by a setting. To ensure it’s turned on, visit your Corporate Billing Settings.