The 2025 edition of our [For The Better award](https://www.teamspirit.co.uk/for-the-better) is open for nominations. And to help celebrate our 30th birthday this year, we’ve increased the For The Better prize fund to a very tidy £20,000 worth of marketing expertise!

For The Better is our annual award where we give our services, free of charge, to a purpose-led, not-for-profit organisation that’s transforming financial services for the better. You can [nominate](https://www.teamspirit.co.uk/for-the-better) an organisation you work for or just simply admire (although get their permission first!).

All nominations are put before our panel of expert judges (more on them at a later date). They choose a winner and then we get to work. Providing pro bono services across a range of marketing disciplines, from strategy and creative to PR, web design and social media.  You can see what we got up to for previous years’ winners [here](https://www.teamspirit.co.uk/work/vestpod)

__…and better than ever.__

Along with our biggest prize fund yet, we’re also giving more not-for-profit organisations a better chance of winning. We’re opening up the award to any not-for-profit that’s breaking down barriers in finance. Be that boosting inclusion, promoting financial education or driving innovation. Anything that’s helping people think and feel differently about money.

So get nominating! The deadline for entries is Friday 20th June. For more information, visit our [For The Better page](https://www.teamspirit.co.uk/for-the-better). And, in the meantime, good luck!


For The Better: Now bigger…

I was recently invited to speak at the Digital Accountancy Show, in an expert panel session on how client feedback can best be used to drive revenue and profit growth.

Key take-aways for the marketing and communications professionals attending were:
- __Feedback needs to be embedded as part of organisational culture, not as a bolt-on__. We discussed how client feedback has most value as part of a wider client-centric approach that incorporates all business touchpoints and propositions.
- __One size doesn’t fit all.__ In structuring a client feedback methodology focused on growth, there’s a need to design for distinct client typologies, based on sector, services purchased to date, value and more. This enables a more granular means of qualifying the risk and potential axes.
- __Qual. and Quant.__ Cross-tabulating big picture quantitative feedback with individual qualitative work is a powerful enabler of where potential and cross-sell opportunities lie.
- __Identifying both recognized and latent needs.__ Interrogating data using qual. and quant. also allows you to identify more than what clients say they want.  Many don’t yet know their needs or what services you could deliver for them, enabling innovation and higher value service tailoring, aligned to their specific business goals.
- __Validating your point of difference.__ Research can help identify whether the primary points of difference your business thinks separate it from competitors match what your customers believe. And, if not, use that data to re-align the two.
- __Benchmark your ‘how’ over your ‘what’.__  Many companies focus overly on the latter, while it’s the ‘how’ that clients remember, value and retain you for.
- __Internal barriers need to be overcome;__ client leads being sometimes reluctant to explore and embrace the findings from client feedback.

A big thank you to Liz Hobkinson of VerityRI for inviting me to speak at the event, and to my panel partner Gregor Angus from AAB. If you’d like to discuss how our experience could help you drive understanding and growth, please contact me @ [eevans@teamspirit.co.uk
](mailto:eevans@teamspirit.co.uk)

How do you turn client  feedback into growth? And what are the most common barriers to adopting findings?  Here’s our view, delivered at the Digital Accountancy Show

Using client  feedback as a driver for growth

Celebrating our 30th year with our 30 Series, this month we take a look at the stories that mattered.

Since Teamspirit launched in 1995, the UK’s financial services sector has been transformed. Not only are ways of working almost unrecognisable, accelerated by technology and changes in attitude, but the industry landscape has been shaped by headline-grabbing events, regulation, and product innovation.

As our timeline across the three decades shows, the journey to today has been quite remarkable.

[View the timeline here](/30-years-timeline)

To celebrate our 30th birthday, we're looking back at some significant financial moments over the last 30 years. Which stand out to you?

30 Series - 30 Events: 30 Years

While Spotify’s fascinating annual reveal of our music habits, or food retailers’ nudges of what we might enjoy next demonstrate how personalisation of communications and experience  creates win-wins for brand and customer, why is financial services late to the party?  

Over half of consumers state they’re more likely to repeat buy after a personalised experience[1]. Equally, 80% of financial institutions view personalisation as essential to meet the required Consumer Duty led standards[2].

So what do we need to do to play catch-up? That was the crux of our breakfast event, run in partnership with The Financial Services Forum, with three leaders in the field:
- David Conner, Head of Experience Design at Scottish Widows
- Simon Ripton, Director of Propositions at Open finance platform Moneyhub
- Richard Sullivan, Financial Services Lead, LinkedIn
- Chair - Fiona Couper, CMO, Teamspirit

Key take-aways from the event held at Mintel were:

- __Moments of truth.__ The importance of interacting with customers at key moments in their journey was critical - not just when providers wanted to sell to them
- __Enriching existing data was essential__ to deliver meaningful customer understanding. And how Open Finance enabled improved tailoring of solutions on dimensions including vulnerability, behaviour and risk
- __More creativity is required to achieve cut through.__  The panel discussed how personalisation needed to think bigger and go beyond the traditional
- __The need for a value exchange.__ How there was a need to provide value in terms of rewards, decision-making information and entertainment through content and gamification in exchange for customers’ data,  time and loyalty.
- __Generational tailoring.__ The meeting discussed that given given Gen X and Gen Z's preferences and expectations of channels, tech and communication, tailoring now needed to work at these levels too
- __The need for companies to  now deliver customer personalisation at Total Experience (TX) level not just UX__, spanning all customer touchpoints
- __‘Continuous engagement' as a marketing strategy.__ Speakers discussed how the impact of different engagements, nudges and interventions could and should be tested continuously to create learnings for later roll out and incorporation into experiences

Personalisation is just one of the emerging trends explored in our recent Signals report which you can view/download [here](https://www.teamspirit.co.uk/news-insights/2025-signals-report)

![FSF Feb Event](//images.ctfassets.net/sxw14dxmazhg/8yzOfsf3nVFljfjyNU1qb/cc45d9380b3a50f08a13626370a56d06/FSF_Feb_Event.png)

## Sources:

1. [https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-state-of-personalization-2021](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-state-of-personalization-2021)
2. [https://www.dynamicyield.com/personalization-maturity-report-for-finance-2023/](https://www.dynamicyield.com/personalization-maturity-report-for-finance-2023/)

With high impact personalised customer experiences and communications on the rise, financial services is one of the slower sectors to the party.  What do experts from Scottish Widows, LinkedIn and Moneyhub feel FS needs to focus on?

How can financial services provide more personalised experiences?

How can ping pong balls help spread a serious message? And how relevant is absurdity to serious business campaigns? Dan Perry, our Strategy Director, talks us through the positive effects of using entertainment in communications.

Filmed at our annual all-staff get together, Dan explores successful campaigns and various ways fun can be incorporated into almost any kind of campaign – to great effect too.

<div style="padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/817255947?h=078dfda0a0&amp;badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" title="You cannot be serious - talk by Dan Perry, Strategy Director, March 2023"></iframe></div><script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>


You cannot be serious

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