Monzo's Very Important 2021 Data Thing đź“Š

Hello Community!

We’re going to be trying something different on social media at the end of the year, and I wanted to share an update.

January is usually when we send your Year in Monzo, a personalised summary of your spending throughout the year.

This year we’ve decided to experiment with something different, and take a look at patterns and trends across everyone’s aggregated spending data instead.

Our social team has worked with one of our data scientists @alinnett, to answer questions like:

  • which city sent the most middle finger emojis to say thanks for a payment?
  • what do people spend more on as they get older?

And we’ll be sharing some charts (and of course, memes) on Twitter throughout the week about what we found. And we’ll be sharing a big quiz of the year on our Instagram Story on Friday. Get involved!

We’re also really lucky that Amelia is going to do an AMA later this week. You can ask her questions about working on this data analysis, or about being a data scientist at Monzo more generally.

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This is great, but I’d personally still like to see my own spending too.

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This sounds great, and something for those of us who follow Monzo but may not bank with them (or at least not frequently enough to get valuable insights)

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Sounds interesting, but how come both can’t be done?

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Because the normal one means too much time correcting merchants and for those on Plus/Premium, it doesn’t work so well where people use custom categories.

I think it’s a shame really as it generates an incredible amount of buzz for Monzo. People love it, just like Spotify wrapped.

But data and charts is always a win!

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I just came on here to joke that #YearInMonzo had been replaced by a bargin bucket equivalent…

Only to find it’s true?

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Yea, I thought it was a joke on Twitter, but it turns out that it’s not the case. I think this will backfire, especially on Social.

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Tough love time for Monzo unfortunately: this is, in my view, a strategic misstep. I can’t fathom why they’d do this.

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If you had any doubt that Monzo is a bank run by twentysomethings, there you have it.

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Judging by this thread it’s outrage. Outrage, painkillers and stair lifts

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Year in Monzo was a huge thing from a marketing perspective I believed, and it was trending out hugely on Twitter etc.

Seems a huge oversight.

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Hmm,

I read this entire statement as;

“We’re not bothering with Year in Monzo as the data team want to spend the time getting insights for Product teams instead”

Useful for you, (probably) useless for us.

Don’t get me wrong, would generally be interested to see this info, on your website and I can see why you might want to collate it.

But year in Monzo was a great feature, really set’s you apart from others (NatWest for example shows my carbon footprint, which is nice, but not useful as I live in the sticks so I don’t really have much choice about “cutting down travel” etc)

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This is a big shame I think. YearInMonzo created a great buzz on social media and actually provided really valuable insight to people who use Monzo as their main account.

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But isn’t that what trends is going to do now? Or at least when it’s finished

As for the social media buzz, let’s see what it actually looks like before saying how terrible it will be

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I’ve emphasised what I think the key point is.

I’m totally down with Monzo bringing in a better way of doing this: but discontinue after you’ve built it!

I just think it’s odd. If it’s too expensive or complex so be it, but it’s a step towards corporatisation and a focus on the needs of the business rather than of the customer.

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You really think year in Monzo was for the customer? It was marketing

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And I think this is why I find it weird, because it’s a hugely popular free marketing tool for the company.

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This sort of thing (this example is probably rather obviously, but still) is good. I like data and I like visualisation about that data, after all I did ask about the 1p messages when everything was down recently.

But this and any other similar, are great but they are way way way below Year in Monzo levels.

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I can’t compete with my friends based on this. I can’t post on Twitter to point out that I spend far too much money on my RSPCA subscription.

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