07/03/2009

Happy 4th of July

07/03/2009

This is a holiday weekend and we’re driving back from Kentucky today so I thought this would be a good time to post an especially nice testimonial. It was a little too long to post in the Testimonial section, so I figured I’d post it in the regular blog since it’s a holiday. Have a happy 4th of July weekend and hopefully a nice success story will help inspire you too.

Bill, Rita, and Gloria-

I’ve been waiting until I had sufficient time to write a proper “thank you” comment. I don’t know where to begin to thank you guys for all of the advice and help in obtaining 1-800-Trial-Pro for our law firm. Our office, family, and close friends actually had a celebration once we were comfortable that the number was ours.

My search for the right toll-free number lasted about six months. At times my family, close friends, and I really worried that I was obsessing too much over toll-free numbers. Not only would I test new word and number combinations daily, but I maintained meticulous notes of new combinations which I would often try on your website well into the early morning hours. I actually started having dreams about toll-free number combinations (I started to feel like Jim Carey in the movie “The Number 23″).

Read the whole letter about 1-800 TRIAL PRO

Making Something out of Nothing

06/30/2009

Someone asked if we “made” 800 numbers and I jokingly responded, Sure we MAKE vanity numbers. We “make” a lot of really great 800 numbers for people every day. I was joking because I don’t usually think of it as making toll free numbers. Toll free numbers were around before I started this business. The difference is that they were just numbers, they weren’t vanity numbers that spelled anything or increased the response rate for their advertising.

We take a resource that already existed and change how it looks to make it more useful for a customer. That’s pretty much a description of “making” things in most businesses. In our case we don’t make a physical product, but that doesn’t mean we’re not making something. In a sense we take what would otherwise be random digits and someone else may have had and gotten rid of, and help match them up with the customer that wants a memorable number for their advertising.

We turn random digits into powerful marketing tools better than anyone else anywhere. It’s not exactly pulling a rabbit out of the hat, but it can be a great tool for your business. If you want some help pulling a rabbit out of the hat, give us a call. We can’t do it all for you but a little experience can definitely help and we’ll be glad to help you for a few minutes and give you a little help if you call us at 1-800 MARKETER.

Experts Agree there’s still 6 million 800 numbers

06/30/2009

According to the SMS there are 6,008,080 available toll free numbers left as of June 27th. I threw in “Experts Agree” just to poke fun at the Fake SMS that keeps claiming experts agree that there is a toll free shortage or some kind of toll free emergency, and that rationing is on it’s way. Smsgov.com always uses the phrase Experts Agree without ever including any facts or details whatsoever. They hate it when I quote the actual 800 number facts that show there’s a 15 to 30 year supply depending on the week because they have no facts, just hype.

If the fake SMS says “Experts Agree” without citing any names, that means they’re lying and made up the rest of the story. They never name any experts just like they never mention who belongs to their fake organization the Toll free Advisory Committee, that doesn’t exist. In fact they never even say who’s writing any of their articles. Their website is set up to hide the identity of whoever is posting their sky is falling posts so that they can make things up and say absolutely anything without any facts and get away with it.

What makes an 800 number memorable?

06/29/2009

Ask yourself what makes a phone number memorable? There isn’t very much written about what makes a phone number memorable but there is a lot of material on remembering names that can help us understand this. I did some research on how to remember people’s names and found some ideas that can help make phone numbers easy to remember too.

Repetition

One of the most important tips I found repeated in several places was repetition. You should always repeat someone’s name back to them as soon as you can in the conversation. In terms of phone numbers, you probably can’t get the prospect to repeat your phone number back but you can repeat the number. That’s called Advertising.

Read the rest about Use, Making a Connection, Uniqueness and how this relates to Phone Numbers

Don’t confuse the Ring To Number with the Phone Company that gets it there

06/25/2009

The Ring To Number is where the toll free number is sending the calls and the Phone Company or Carrier is the one that sends the calls wherever you want the calls to go. This sounds obvious when you think about it, but a lot of people seem to get confused and think that changing the ring to number means that they’ve changed or selected a new carrier. The easiest way to explain it is that the phone company is the cord and the ring to number is the outlet. And changing where it’s plugged in, doesn’t change the cord getting it there.

I think this stems from another thing that people get confused about sometimes. You do NOT have to use the company that provides the local number to get toll free calls to the local number. Therefore changing the ring to number to a phone line from company A doesn’t change the toll free service over to company A. In order to transfer your number to a different phone company you have to fill out a resporg change form to authorize the new company to take over the number. It also tells them where to send the calls and who to bill.

From the local phone company’s point of view incoming toll free calls are just calls going to that local number like any other calls to that local number. The local phone company doesn’t even know or care that you have a toll free number pointed to your line until you till out the transfer form. They’re each totally separate. So when we say you have to select a toll free carrier or change the toll free service that doesn’t require you to change your ring to number. It means you have to fill out the transfer form for whatever company you want to use. And don’t assume that just because you sent them the form that it’s automatically transferred either. You have to follow up to make sure it did get done too.

We’ll SEND your 800 # to any carrier

06/24/2009

We give you free temporary service to get you started but the whole idea of our service is to transfer your 800 number or SEND it to whatever phone company you want it with. So releasing your 800 number is part of our job, much more than it is for regular phone companies. That’s why we make releasing numbers such a priority and do them so much faster and easier than anyone else.

We’ve come up with an acronym to explain how we process toll free releases here at TollFreeNumbers.com.

It’s called SEND.

Same day processing;
Email the customer;
Notify the new carrier;
Doesn’t have to match exactly.

Read what we do to SEND your 800 number off!

Google reserved 1 million local #s to expand Google Voice

06/23/2009

Google Voice has been limited to the pre-existing customers since it was announced, but Network World reported recently came out that Google reserved 1 million local numbers with Level 3, signaling that it may be ready to roll out the Google Voice in a big way. Google Voice provides many of the enhanced voicemail services that the major voicemail services provides and also lets users unify their phone numbers and have a single phone number ring all of their phones.

Google Voice doesn’t presently include 800 numbers but Google Voice 800 Numbers may follow and if they offer Google Voice Number Portability and a search function on just those 1 million numbers, they may create a big local vanity number market.

We’ll run out of 800 numbers in 2038!

06/23/2009

As of June 20th, 2009, there are 6,045,772 toll free numbers in the spare or available pool. That’s down by 17,482 numbers in the past week. At that rate there would only be enough toll free numbers left to last for 29 years or until the year 2038.

I don’t know about you but I’ve got enough things to worry about for the year 2038 already. That’s when another form of the Y2K bug for Unix will hit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem It’s just as silly to worry about the year 2038 bug today as it is to worry that we’re running out of toll free numbers in 29 years.

Are you really expecting something like 800-444-4444 or 800-400-4000?

06/22/2009

Here’s an email I got the other day which is typical in a sense, so I figured it might be helpful to answer it here for everyone, on the website.

I am looking for an available easy number for a small business i am setting up. I am looking for something like 1800-444-4444 or 1-800-400-4000. Numbers that are easy for people to remember. What could you find for me that meets my requirements?

Unfortunately, the answer is simple. With requirements or even expectations like that absolutely nobody is going to be able to help you. The person writing that hasn’t really analyzed or thought very much about what they’re asking for. There are 8 possible numbers like each of those, since the first number can’t be a zero or a one.

So the request is basically like contacting someone in the domain name business and saying that you’re a small business and want a short easy to remember domain name, something like A.COM. (with just one letter.) Nobody in their right mind would think that a domain name with just one letter would be available. Yet there are 26 letters and another 10 numbers, or 36 domain names with just one letter. That’s twice as many as there are of the toll free number they were asking for. So you could argue that what this customer was asking for is twice as hard as a single digit domain name.

Read more about how to respond to customers with unreasonable expectations.

Are names that are easier to spell really any easier to remember?

06/19/2009

If you meet several new people at a party which ones are you more likely to remember the name of? Someone with an easy to spell name or someone with a name that reminds you of something? Or maybe even better, someone with a name that reminds you of something related to that person.

A nice numeric number like a number with some repetitive digits, patterns, or ending in zeros is easy to dial. They’re kind of like names that are easier to spell. It’s nice to have a name that’s easy to spell. But it doesn’t really make you that much more memorable when you meet new people at a party.

Words beat Patterns of Numbers because they mean something.

A number that spells something related to your business is like a name that reminds you of something related to that person. Unlike an easy to spell name, a name that reminds you of something DOES make you much more memorable when you meet someone new at a party. That of course translates into more interaction with those people the next time you meet them, which in the vanity number side of this analogy means more calls and more sales.

Easier to remember names also translate into more calls and more sales!