On May 11th, I woke up to an account suspension email from Mailchimp, the email marketing provider we use at CAWSTEM.
If you know me personally or read Note #02, then you definitely know about CAWSTEM, a social enterprise I co-founded in 2018.
On May 10th, I had logged in to update one of our email templates, and noticed an unusual message on the dashboard. I immediately clicked on it and sent a message asking for clarity and how we could resolve (image on the left). When I checked CAWSTEM’s email the next morning, the message I got was an account suspension, and advise to seek a new vendor (image on the right). Basically, Mailchimp said boy, bye!
I went over the message again and again. I was confused because I still could not figure out what policy exactly was violated (still don’t know), and there were no direct email channels to share a complaint.
I sat there thinking about where to begin from. Our mailing list, landing page, sign up forms were all built on Mailchimp. And even though I had been meaning to overhaul this, I just didn’t seem to find the time. #CAWSTEMWeekly, our weekly opportunities newsletter was ready to be sent out but no platform. In fact, our Content Lead had drafted and published the newsletter campaign, but she didn’t realize it didn’t go out because of the account suspension.
I was dumbfounded for a while. Where do we start from, kept ringing in my head.
For the first time, I acknowledged the fact that my dream, our dream was worthwhile and it didn’t deserve to be taken away just like that. The doubts dissipated, we had done something worthwhile with CAWSTEM and it was worth fighting for. From a mere dream/idea 4+ years ago to a discussion with a friend and now co-founder Temi, and now an 8-woman volunteer team, 4 main partners, 200+ core members, 1000+ on the mailing list. I had to take this more seriously, I had to stop undermining the potential, 4+ years of building something had to count.
Then I remembered a note I had written about email marketing sites as far back as 2020. Right under Mailchimp was MailerLite and ConvertKit, so I decided to give both a try. By the end of the day, I was sold with MailerLite and started figuring out how to migrate our subscribers, build a landing page, a site and everything we needed for an online presence.
Today, we launched our new website making it much easier for new users to join and for old users to refer their friends.
I looove the outcome of the new website and particularly thrilled about the impact stories from our community members. I’d like to ask you to please take a moment to visit our new website to join in, refer friends, or even partner with us.
Launching the site today had me looking back on the past couple weeks. I’m really grateful for the experience and detour, the suspension was a real wake up call to redirect me personally and CAWSTEM as an organization.
So today’s note is simple:
Embrace life’s unexpected detours as they arrive; trust that God has a plan and a purpose in them.
I know it can be hard, but detours are life’s way of bringing us closer to where we are meant to be. Are you going to resist or embrace life’s detour?