Marketing and the Consumer Duty: the perfect couple

August 10, 2022

It felt bigger than the build-up to Who Shot JR? But the wait is over and the publication of the Consumer Duty’s final guidance, is here. And it’s a big deal.

"Quite possibly the biggest we’ve seen since RDR,” according to Mike Barrett of the Lang Cat, and way more significant than simply 'TCF on steroids' according to the dudes at The Verve Group.

The good news?

Firms that are already on top of their marketing strategy will already be satisfying many of demands the Consumer Duty already is making on communications. How?

Well the Duty is looking for:

👀 Clear, concise and understandable communication (no jargon please)

Consistent and timely communication (not once a year)

🔪 Segmented communications (not just a boring Budget summary sent to all)

📊 Monitored and tested communications (ensure they're being opened and read)

📺 Use of the appropriate communication channels (might not be TikTok)

If you’re using an email platform to communicate with your clients, then it’s already doing a lot of the heavy Duty lifting for you because it allows you to:

🪓Segment your data
👔 Send content tailored to those segments
📈Track engagement
📮Monitor deliverability


Many readers of The Naked Adviser will already be doing this:

🔪 You’ll have segmented your clients and applied that segmentation to your email database.

👀 You’ll be sending content that’s relevant to those segments, content that’s jargon-free and interesting.

⏰ You’ll be sending that consistently.

📊 You’ll be using a good email platform that allows for good deliverability and includes engagement tracking.

📺 And you’ll be able to report all of this and show why you’re using that channel.

But enough with the emojis.

If this isn’t what you’re doing, you’ll need to make that shift, and do it quickly. But once you’ve taken the step, it’s not just clients who’ll benefit - your business as a whole will be much better off for it too.

Simple hack

Lee Robertson of Octo Members Group swears by Blinkist, which condenses popular books by cutting out the waffle and focusing on the key messages.

Article of the week

Given my new-found obsession with everlasting life, What ever happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans? intrigued me. “A few of them decomposed into a ‘plug of fluids’ and were scraped off the bottom of a capsule.” Yum.

Muscle man

Swiss researchers have developed wearable muscles’ that use sensors and AI to help people with upper-limb impairments use their arms - in testing, their device increased endurance by more than 200%.

Creepy children

Child-shaped bollards designed to alert drivers to school crossing are branded 'terrifying' and have turned village into 'an 80s horror film' says the Daily Mail, and it’s right.

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Faith Liversedge writing on her laptop