Neither of us has ever written a book before. That meant that we needed a lot of help.

We needed help with the content, and we got it from a great many people in the industry who generously shared their thoughts, opinions and insights.

We needed help with the innumerable practicalities, from arranging to record and transcribe all those interviews and focus groups through to maintaining some sort of grip on the head-spinning subject of version control.

We needed a lot more help than most experienced authors with the lengthy, complex and often somewhat mysterious process of making the initial sale, and then producing and promoting the eventual product.

And finally we needed both practical and emotional support from the people around us, both at home and in our day jobs. You can't write a book without imposing a good deal on them.

In return for all this help, the only thing we had to offer was a name-check in the Acknowledgements section, so in the next few paragraphs we'll aim to pay what we owe.

First, we received a lot of input from members of the Financial Services Forum, the membership organisation dedicated to improving standards of financial services marketing and chaired by Anthony. All this help was orchestrated for us by the Forum team, and particularly by the irreplaceable Richard Nolan, ably supported by Kate Taylor and Rachel Shackleton and led by David Cowan.

We're grateful to all the members who completed our quantitative research questionnaire, and even more grateful to those who took part in our focus group discussions: Ian Henderson, Malcolm Oliver, Mark Mullen, David Lundholm, Mark Evans, Nicola Day, Annabel Venner, Ali Crossley, Sue Simpson, Clive Kornitzer, Stephen Gunkel, David Wright, Pete Markey, Ken Hogg, Bradley Gamage, Jonathan Spooner, Nigel Gilbert and Richard Royds. Additional thanks go to Ian Henderson for making the Boardroom at his agency AML available for these sessions, and to Hobie Walker for feeding and watering us during them.

Bradley Gamage also made the facilities of his agency, SapientRazorfish, available for our ‘30 Under 30’ workshop in which we consulted a number (actually rather fewer than 30, and not all of them aged under 30, so not our greatest-ever workshop branding) of the financial marketing world's rising stars. These included Joe Buzzard, Audrey Adjei, Sophie Church, Jessica Cordery, Richa Jaiswal, Pete Knott, Hayden Leith, Charlie Lynch, Jeremy Morat, Victoria O'Callaghan, Jess Over, Phil Rook, Alex Sangster, Daniel Saunders, Charleen Sparks, Laura Steel and Ben Stokes.

And Tony Langham made the Boardroom at his agency, Lansons, available for an exceptionally illuminating session on data, artificial intelligence and machine learning with a group of pointy-headed gurus who somehow managed to share their wisdom with us in remarkably understandable English. This group was recruited by Ian Hitt of Ninety, and included David Francis, Giles Blackburn, Peter Pugh-Jones, Nick Timon, Russel Goldie, Salvatore Pennino and Thom Rodde.

When we weren't picking people's brains in groups, we were picking people's brains individually. Rory Sutherland, who may be the single individual who best understands the overlap between the academic discipline of Behavioural Economics and the extremely unacademic world of direct marketing, was generous with his time. So too was Professor Adrian Furnham, whose academic record in financial services speaks for itself. And both John Smythe and Stewart Bromley (separately) gave great insight into the complex and difficult subject of building internal culture.

Meanwhile, this project wouldn't have advanced very far without the substantial assistance of our agent, Jonathan Hayden, who must often have been startled by the naivety and ignorance of his first-time authors and indeed frustrated by our slow rate of progress, but managed to hide all such negative emotions. And at Wiley, we're grateful for all the efforts of our commissioning editor Gemma Valler, and our tireless project editor Emily Paul.

Many thanks to Sian Rance and Emil Dacanay at D.R.ink for the jacket design and a lot of further design work on our website, social media presence and graphics for other marketing and launch events.

Thanks to our lovely wives Louise and Judy for all their necessary supportiveness and encouragement, even though it's very difficult to see anything much in it for them.

And finally sincere and heartfelt thanks to anyone we've forgotten. We recognise that sincerity and heartfeltness don't count for much when you can't see your name in print, but, honestly, we are very grateful.