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Hello Eclipse readers!

First question, did you know that this has been the driest three months (from February to April) in England since 1956? And that despite the fact I still regularly have my heating on, we're facing a big drought in England? The moral of the story is to make the most of this gorgeous sunshine this week. Second question, did you know we have a fabulous new Head of Marketing? No? Ah well, let me introduce Holly... 

In the spotlight this week...💡

"You've got the website, social media pages and email platform. But with great power comes great responsibility: what do you do with them now?"

Holly Turnbull, Head of Marketing

Communications; what, when, how, to who is a far more complex subject than I ever realised. It's the same for any business, including advice firms. You've got internal communications to your team; keeping them up to date with important information but without overwhelming them with unnecessary detail. Communications to clients, both those that are personal to them, and those that are more generic and informative. And communications in terms of a marketing strategy and ensuring more people know about your business and services.

Overlay that with the fact that everyone consumes information differently. Sending an email is a simple approach from the sender, but for the receiver there's no guarantee they'll even receive it, and if they do they mightn't have time to read it properly, or if they do they might infer something different from it than was intended. Extrapolate that against all communications channels and audiences and you have ... a need for a Head of Marketing! 

In all seriousness though, it really is a challenge, particularly for any growing business and is something that needs real focus and thought applying. Holly's blog above gives some brilliant ideas and insights to help you do that. 

At Verve we always like to practice what we preach:

• We have launched a whole new internal comms framework, including a guide (and comms bingo!) to help people be mindful and efficient with their communications. 
• We recently updated all our email options and messaged everyone to confirm their preferences, to make sure we were only sending them the information that they want and need. 
• We are now doing so many events and training and webinars, which is amazing and helps add so much value to advisers (everyone loves some free CPD!) but we knew that communicating about all the events could be overwhelming so we have overhauled our approach to streamline a round up of everything instead.
• With clients, we had a mix of compliance bulletins plus regular newsletters and updates to our software. We have moved much of these to sit within Dextera instead, protecting people's inboxes and ensuring emails are saved for the most important or timely comms.

And this brings us to / leaves us with, Eclipse! And what the future of this newsletter might be. This is week 349 of the newsletter, meaning it has been going for circa 7 years now, which is unreal. It has, of course, evolved a lot over the years, going from a purely compliance round up, to a wider review of the market; from thought leadership (aka my musings, plus wine recommendations) to being a place to share a wide range of deeper content. 

As we consider our comms, where Verve is and the fact that our next Eclipse will be our 350th, we decided it's time to take a little pause and reimagine it. How can we ensure that the thing landing in your inbox is of real benefit and value, and how do we make sure we bringing you something different to what you're already getting from other newsletters..?

Unsurprisingly, we have a few ideas up our sleeves! But for now, we're going to take a little hiatus for a short while (I promise, this isn't just a big skive so we can enjoy the sunshine ☀️) and come back soon with a refreshed approach.

If you have any ideas / thoughts / suggestions / comments, then let me know! If there's stuff you've loved from Eclipse or stuff you're happy to see the back of, please feel free to share - the more insight the better.

In the meantime, the usual links of insightfulness (nice new term I've coined there!!) can be found below. Our live demo and Q&A with AdvisoryAI from Tuesday can be watched back (super interesting bit of tech), plus you can sign up for all future AI showcases. Along with some musings from Ali on diversification (if you've even glanced at LinkedIn recently you'll know this is a HOT topic) and a final word on comms, and less being more.

Have a wonderful weekend / week / month / TBC all, 

Back soon! 

Roll this week's video 🎬

Catch up on the latest episode of SPOTLIGHT AI series, featuring Advisory AI

Hear from the experts 🤓

Bitesize lessons on simple and effective comms, from a copywriting legend

The latest from Verve 💜

Read Ali's latest musings on investment markets, is it the decade of diversification?