Because remembering or finding your number is harder than translating the digits.
Someone on a Wikipedia discussion about the Toll Free page, questioned recently the value of vanity numbers and expressed their personal preference for numeric numbers. This is understandable and I’ve written about people’s personal preference for numeric numbers before. But I figured this was worth including here since it explained it differently.
First of all, numeric numbers ARE better in some situations, specifically if you’re dealing with an elderly audience (where the extra effort might be even more difficult for them), a foreign language speaking audience such as attorney’s specializing in immigration law, or internal or repeat calling situations, like a calling card for example. These situations all do lend themselves to numeric numbers over vanity numbers.
However outside of those situations you have to ask yourself is it more important to make the front door to your business easy to find or easy to open. Sure the person standing in front of it wants it to be easy to open. But they’re assuming that they’re already standing in front of it. If you do a survey whether or not people like doors that are easier to open or not, they’ll pick easier to open. But that’s because they forgot the first half of the opening a door, which is finding it.
That’s kind of like asking people which food they prefer, a hamburger from McDonalds or a Steak? If they leave off the expense of paying for them the steak wins every time. But in real life when people have to decide between a steak and a fast food hamburger, a lot more people actually pick the more convenient fast food hamburger. So what people say they want and what they actually buy the most of isn’t always the same thing.
You can also look at vanity numbers like negative political advertising. People say they prefer positive advertising, but when it comes down to the wire, politicians always fall back on negative ads when it’s close because that produces better results. Advertisers have to try and consider what consumers want, but if they say they want one thing but that’s not what produces better results, advertisers usually go with what produces the best.
So I can appreciate individual preferences for numeric numbers but they’re not including the effort of looking up or looking for that number, they’re ignoring the main benefit of vanity numbers and just looking at the extra couple seconds of effort. However, in reality the effort to remember or find the number when you need it often requires more effort than looking at the letters on the keys. And in reality, people never decide not to call someone because they have to translate the number. But if they get distracted or see a competitor when they are waiting for or looking for your number, they may not call you at all. Why take that chance when you can program your number right into a person’s head with a vanity number?
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R o b i n R e e d says:
May 10, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I’m not looking for a number that spells anything. Rather, I want a toll free number that’s tremendously easy to remember by using repeating digits for example.
Furthermore, what does the numbers in the email you sent mean? Most of them are 16-18 digits long…I don’t understand how that works in telephone terms.
Please advise. Thanks in advance, Robin.
Bill Quimby (678 comments.) says:
May 11, 2009 at 12:38 am
Robin,
The Keyword Lookup is geared toward words and won’t be much help in finding numbers like that. Nothing will. And even if you found something like that it wouldn’t be as helpful as you’re assuming it would be. Think of how many nice numeric numbers you’ve probably ever seen and then think of how many you can remember along with the product or service it’s for. If you can remember one, that’s a lot and it’s not even from advertising but it’s probably from repetitive use. That’s because nice or repetitive numbers aren’t more memorable in advertising. If it doesn’t make a connection to your product or service it’s really not going to increase the response rate. That’s because nobody calls your number because it’s easy to dial, but they do call more if it’s easy to remember. Easy to dial may seem like it would be easy to remember but it’s not.
I think you used the Keyword Lookup if you’re referring to an email list. You can put in a query with the Toll Free Search Engine on the top of the page with a few (read that to mean 3 or 4) repetitive digits and 3 or 4 *s for wildcards. That will find some nice numeric numbers, which we call premium numbers. The Keyword Lookup you used doesn’t find them in the one that emails you the list. Sorry! Give that a try and let me know if you have any questions or need any more help with it.
Bill