How Social Media Saved My Wedding

I know that sounds like a ridiculous statement (b/c it partially is), but my reception may not have been the same without it. We had decided that our theme was going to be “Chicago” early this year, and started thinking of ways to make that come alive in the banquet hall. I kept saying I wanted to make models of the buildings, but didn’t know how that was going to happen. After many Google searches I found my solution: postcards with models of Chicago buildings. It was some local printing press that had no contact form on the site, no phone number, no shopping cart, just a form to print out and mail to them. I don’t think I have ever placed an order this way, at least not in the past 10 years. It’s 2011!  Having no other choice I decided to cross my fingers, put my stamp on the envelope and send off an order for every Chicago building they had.

I came home from my first day at my new job (March 14) and saw the package was waiting for me in my pile of mail – ripped it open and smiled as I thumbed through all the cards. Sears Tower (I don’t know anyone who uses Willis) check, Trump check, Aon Building check, Bahai Temple check, Hancock… where’s my Hancock!? Nooo! Of all the 30+ buildings they could forget to include, they pick 1 of 3 that I wanted to use for my reception. How do I fix this? Was I going to need to mail them a letter and wait a few weeks again? How can a company not have any contact information on their site!? (I now see that they have added an email address to the site) I’m not sure why I figured a company that required me to mail them a paper form to place an order would be on Facebook, but I guess I decided to search anyways. Lucky for me, they had a company page, and they were active on it! From there it was easy:

And that is how social media saved my wedding. See the statement wasn’t that ridiculous.

I’ve been waiting for a while now to share this experience – finally found the time. This company is taking advantage of a free communication method that enables them to effectively handle client relations by going to where their clients live – on Facebook. When “a company” reaches out to its customers via this public forum, it shows (or at least makes it seem like to everyone watching) that they care. Matt, the rep or owner of this printing press did more than I expected by finding my order information (w/o me giving him any more info than that Facebook post) and mailing the missing card immediately. Because the response was unexpected (I thought I would have to snail mail another order form or letter to solve this problem) and easy, I naturally was very satisfied and felt inclined to share my positive experience on their Facebook wall.

In conclusion: care about your customers, and they will LIKE you too!

Here’s how we used the models (I had to scan and enlarge them to get them to this size):