Poor Clay!

Don’t make the same mistake that Mr. Seacrest made.

Poor Clay!

Poor Clay Aiken! Clay lost on American Idol to Ruben Studdard by about 130,000 votes. Yet to this day, the outcome is one of the most controversial results and in the intervening years, Clay’s record sales of nearly 5 million are nearly double those of Ruben’s! So what happened?

Voters were confused because host Ryan Seacrest told viewers to dial a terrible toll-free number, 866-IDOLS-02. Even though he repeated it over and over again, confused fans defaulted to dialing the 800-prefix version. Why? Because 800-prefix toll-free numbers had a 20-year head start on all of the other toll-free prefixes that have followed it such as 866 and 877 and consumers are conditioned to dialing it when they hear the term “toll-free.” As a result, about 250,000 people accidentally dialed 800-IDOLS 02!

That means that Clay could have been the winner had many of those people who accidentally dialed the 800 number instead of the 866 number voted for the former teacher. Don’t make the same mistake that Mr. Seacrest made. Only use high-quality 800 numbers in your advertising and you’re sure to be successful. Meet you at the top.

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