Lifehacker has a story today on WakeupDialer. If you couldn’t guess by the name, this is a service that wakes you up with a phone call that plays a recorded message. This got me thinking about a roommate I once had that asked his mom to call him every day to wake him up for work.
Why not just use an alarm clock? The theory at work here is based on decades (depending on your age) of Pavlovian-style programming. We’ve been programmed for years to jump when the phone rings. Until the advent of caller ID (and to a lesser extent answering machines), you had to answer the phone.
Why? Because. Because it could have been an emergency or it could have been that special someone – or it could have been that special someone with an emergency (note: did drunk dialing occur before cell phones?). In the end, this was a very targeted affair. Chances were (fairly) good that you knew the person on the other end and what they had to say was actually meant for you. When it wasn’t (telemarketers) we got very angry.
People respond to wake-up calls because of the inherent social connection. My roommate responded because he did not want his mom to think he was letting her down.
Now, think about your marketing. Is your marketing more like a personalized wake-up call from Mom or is it the generic, easily-ignored, and just plain annoying noise generated from the bedside clock radio? Which one do you think gets a better response?
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