Smartphones and company vanity numbers

An appealing feature of smartphones and Blackberries are key pads. They are laid out like a computer keyboard, making it easy to text and send e-mails, but harder to detect a “vanity number” or phone word.

For example, Mako and Associates uses the vanity number 1-888-SUE-MAKO. Without deciphering each letter, Justin Tipton doesn’t know what number it is. “The letters don’t correspond to it like a normal phone,” he said.

Manny “Papageek” from Geeks in a Flash found a solution. “You can hold the shift key down on many of them, and dial the regular words to it, and it will automatically figure out what the number is,” he said.

Papageek said just because phones have changed, doesn’t mean advertisers should stop using vanity numbers, but when possible, they should spell out the letters in numeric form and advertise their local number as well. That way they are covering the bases for everyone’s phone. “It can’t hurt at all, but don’t bank on it. One of the cool things to do now is if you get a vanity number, and you get a matching website, that is very powerful,” Manny said.

1-800-Flowers does this by corresponding their telephone number to their website, 1-800-flowers.com.