A vanity toll-free phone number, also known as a "phone word," is a toll-free phone number that makes a word rather than just a sequence of numbers. If you're a florist, it might be 1-800 FLOWERS. For a dance studio, it might be 1-800-DANCING.

Why are vanity numbers better than regular numbers? It's all about two things: ease of recall and name recognition. The fact is, our brains are much better at recognizing words than numbers. We're all able to memorize numbers, of course, but it takes some effort to do it and mistakes are pretty easy to make. But remembering a word, especially a word that's associated with your business, is easy and natural. And that makes vanity toll-free numbers much easier to remember.

When you advertise, you want potential customers to be able to contact you right away. You want those phones to ring! Studies have shown that vanity toll-free phone numbers increase response rates to direct-response advertising from 30% to as much as 60%! In today's highly-competitive information market, you don't have very much time to get your message across, and the easier you make it for customers to respond to your advertising the more responses you're going to receive.

But it goes beyond the response of those who see your ads. Let's say you get a response and gain a satisfied customer. Congratulations! But that's not the end of the process. Your happy customer will surely have friends, family members, co-workers, and others who may be interested in the same goods or services. Naturally your customer will tell his or her friends about you. But there's a big difference between this: "I can't recommend them enough. Let me give you their phone number. It's – oh, wait – I had it written down right here – well, you can look them up online." And this: "Their phone number's easy to remember. It's 1-800-DESIGNS."

It's all about making it as easy as possible for your customers to find you.