Most people treat email like a checklist item. Write. Send. Hope. But what if the real power of email had nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with using a proven system?

Imagine sitting down with someone who’s spent two whole decades testing, tweaking, and perfecting email messages that people actually read, reply to, and buy from. That’s what this session gives you. It’s not theory. It’s not recycled advice. It’s real, battle-tested lessons from the front lines.

You’ll learn exactly what works and what doesn’t. You’ll hear why some emails get ignored, while others get opened and acted on fast.

Let’s break down the APE Method. It’s a simple three-step formula that helps you grab attention, drive action, and make more sales.

Whether you’re brand new or have been emailing for years, this will sharpen your game quickly and help you write emails that actually work.

Useful Episode Resources

FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

Join our FREE Facebook group

If you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.

Try ResponseSuite for $1

This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.

Join The Email Hero Blueprint

Want more? Let's say you're a course creator, membership site owner, coach, author, or expert and want to learn about the ethical psychology-based email marketing that turns 60-80% more of your newsletter subscribers into customers (within 60 days). If that's you, then The Email Hero Blueprint is for you.

This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent sales flow without launching another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines.

Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcast

Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about the psychology of marketing and the 9 things we use in all our email campaigns) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.

Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. 

And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know! 

00:01.17

Kennedy Kennedy

Viewers question, if you were starting over from scratch, but with your 20 years of experience and knowledge, what would you do? That is a great question.

00:38.11

Kennedy Kennedy

Awesome. By the way, thanks for all your questions and your comments that you're putting on these videos here on YouTube. Really appreciate it. And I ah plan on making content around those questions. So if you've got questions, make sure you put them below. So this is a good one.

00:49.16

Kennedy Kennedy

20 years experience, but starting over, what would I do? I basically have a process, like a framework of ingredients that I always like to think about. And I call it the APE process. A-P-E. e I like to have these little acronyms for things so I remember all the pieces when I'm in the weeds of actually doing stuff. I'll go, how do remember to make sure that I don't forget any these out, I don't forget any these things, I don't leave any of them out, and I just bring of these acronyms or all of these things.

01:15.28

Kennedy Kennedy

So the A in A stands for attention. And there's three elements to attention. The first piece that we really have to get right is making sure that when someone first joins our email list, we realize that's when we have more of their attention than we'll probably ever have ever again. Think about your own behavior. You join someone's email list.

01:37.80

Kennedy Kennedy

And you open all their emails for the next few days. And for them um basically basically after 30 days, you're probably not opening as many of their emails. Your subscribers are the same. Like a lot of your behaviors are your subscribers' are behaviors, right?

01:51.80

Kennedy Kennedy

So just start observing observing what it is that you do. So what we want to do, because we know that when someone first joins your email list, those first 14 to 30 days, that's when we have most people's attention.

02:04.19

Kennedy Kennedy

That's when we want to do stuff with the attention we've already got. A lot of people try and waste a lot of time and a lot of effort trying to extend the amount of attention that they've got.

02:14.94

Kennedy Kennedy

The truth is you're better just to use that time to leverage and really employ the attention that you've already been given. and gifted by this lovely new subscriber. So how do you do that? Well, in the first few days of someone joining your email list, you've got most of their attention. So tell them what you can do for them.

02:31.64

Kennedy Kennedy

Make offers in that time because you're never going to have that level of attention again. That's the first thing. The second part of the the attention section is to do stuff in your emails that actually get attention. If your emails are actually boring,

02:48.93

Kennedy Kennedy

then you're not going to get attention. So that's why you'll see in my emails I'll often play around with the spacing, I'll maybe highlight stuff, I'll put an animated GIF or an image or a button, I'll play around with stuff to get attention. I'll also use different emotions, which we'll come onto a little bit later.

03:04.69

Kennedy Kennedy

And also the big part and the third part of this attention thing is to use variety. How many of those big gurus do you see who you just know when they're in launch mode because they send you those emails? Those emails that stand out like a sore thumb in the inbox. You're like, oh, it must be launch time again for that offer.

03:24.90

Kennedy Kennedy

ah see it every single time. If you use the same type of email over and over again... then people are going to lose attention. So you definitely want to use and create variety in your emails um in order to to get all of that attention. And by the way, before we get into the P and the E of Ape, if you're not already a member of my free Facebook group over on Facebook, it's called The Email Marketing Show Community.

03:51.80

Kennedy Kennedy

I highly recommend you come and join us. it's really good fun. You get to join my email list, receive my emails. But also in that community, I share what's working. I share ideas. And you get to come in and ask your questions about how you apply this stuff in practical sense to your specific business. I know your business is different. I want to make sure you can use this stuff, make it all really applicable to your business. So come and ask me questions in there. Just go to Facebook, search for the Email Marketing Show Community.

04:14.64

Kennedy Kennedy

So back to the content. The P of APE stands for prioritize One of the things I definitely underestimated and really until the last two years is that really what our job is in all marketing, very specifically email marketing, though, is getting people to prioritize paying attention to you.

04:37.95

Kennedy Kennedy

Why should somebody in their list of priorities, why should listening to your email, why should taking action and enrolling in your program, applying for your program or buying your course, why should they do that now?

04:51.20

Kennedy Kennedy

Because in our lives, all we do as human beings is we we play with our priorities all the time. Oh, look, it's 3.30. three thirty I need to go to the school and pick up the kids from school. Otherwise, the poor kids are going to be standing outside in the rain for hours.

05:05.45

Kennedy Kennedy

If I'm like, oh, i'm going to do this other thing instead. Or i need I'm going to be late for that dental appointment, my dentist appointment. I need to go right now. Why? Because there's a reason to prioritize those things.

05:16.95

Kennedy Kennedy

So one of the things we are basically doing is we are dealing with people's priorities. And some the types of ways that you've seen people use prioritization skills, some of the subs subsets of prioritization are things like urgency. Hey, this offer is closing. The event is happening.

05:36.17

Kennedy Kennedy

it It closes on Monday. ah the other one Another one of them is scarcity. Oh, there's only 25 spots. There's only 100 places. There's only five spots.

05:46.75

Kennedy Kennedy

That's another prioritization play that you can use. So once we realize that what we have to do is get people to prioritize paying attention and prioritize taking action, enrolling, applying, paying, then we really unlock something special. It took me way too long to figure that out, right? So we are in a game of prioritizing.

06:11.08

Kennedy Kennedy

How do you get somebody to choose to do this instead of literally anything else they could be doing? How do you get them to do it? And thing number three, so part three of this, the E, is engagement. And how do you do this? Three pieces to engagement, right?

06:27.31

Kennedy Kennedy

The very first one is engagement comes from consistency. When people know that you are going to show up, yeah they will see they will seek you out. They will look for your emails. Like, I'll give you another example from another part of the world, right?

06:43.78

Kennedy Kennedy

um Near where I live, if I want to get into the city but which I live closest to Newcastle, I live at like a 20-minute drive away from that city. okay I live in one of the suburbs.

06:55.53

Kennedy Kennedy

There's two main ways that I could get to that city. One is by using a taxi, and the other is by using the local metro station. rail service. like It's like ah an underground tube system type thing.

07:11.03

Kennedy Kennedy

Now, I would love to use the metro service because it's significantly less expensive than getting a taxi or an Uber. But the problem is the trains are off more than they're on. There's suspended servers, someone's stolen some of the electrical line, there's the wrong type of leaf on the ground.

07:30.61

Kennedy Kennedy

Some stupid shit like that's always was going down. Oh, it's a Sunday, so we've just decided... Like, just some crap. So we've put a bus replacement, or it's up to you. It's just awful. So what did I do? I stopped using the service.

07:43.95

Kennedy Kennedy

And I said, you know what, if I need to get to an appointment and I have to be there on time, which you but because I'm prioritizing it, right? Ironically, then I need to get a taxi. I need to get a car. I need to get in the Uber.

07:56.42

Kennedy Kennedy

Now, if if if it didn't really matter and i was willing to sort of show up and go, well let's just see if the train shows up. That's a different thing altogether. I Actually, very luckily, a new train service just started a couple of months ago, so now and that one's really reliable.

08:10.10

Kennedy Kennedy

So again, because I know it's consistent, it runs every half hour, every 30 minutes, I show up and I get the train into the city center. What does that mean? I can rely on it. And when someone realizes that you are consistent, like a consistent, reliable train, they will see you as a consistent, reliable person.

08:27.43

Kennedy Kennedy

So if you're showing up regularly in your emails, they're going think, huh, that's what I'm getting when the person's not, like when I haven't paid them anything. They're consistent as a person. They see that as a belief.

08:39.12

Kennedy Kennedy

They see that as part of your character. If someone's inconsistent with their emails, what does that mean? Well, what's it going to be like if I pay them? Are they also going to not show up sometimes when I am paying them?

08:50.14

Kennedy Kennedy

That's what it implies. So being consistent. Also being consistent means you show up more often, which means you make more offers, which means you make more sales. Definitely really, really important. The next thing I think I would do, the second part of this engagement piece, is to vary the emotions. Really big thing, difficult to do, but you can do it. I believe in you, right?

09:08.71

Kennedy Kennedy

So here's how you do that. one of the things we all tend to do is we all will default to one or two emotions. Mine tend to be funny and wacky or inspirational. right They're the two main sort of emotions that I'll communicate in my email. Something funny and crazy and outrageous or something really motivational, inspiring and encouraging.

09:28.74

Kennedy Kennedy

But of course, there are only two emotions and not everybody resonates and and takes action and and really connects with those emotions. Some people need to be shown the horror, the the awful thing that they need to avoid.

09:40.66

Kennedy Kennedy

Some of them need social proof and an inspiration from other people who've had success and I could go on. Look at the different emotions you could be using and use them in your emails.

09:53.07

Kennedy Kennedy

And then ah the final bit is a really practical bit about engagement, which is to really realize that the game of email is a lot easier. Getting your emails actually delivered and not in spam is easier.

10:04.51

Kennedy Kennedy

Getting more people to buy from you is easier if you do one thing. and that is focus on engagement in terms of getting people to reply to your emails and click on the links.

10:15.11

Kennedy Kennedy

If the aim of the game and any of of email is one thing, it's literally to get people to reply and click to the click the links in your emails. That's all email marketing is.

10:26.99

Kennedy Kennedy

And when you realize that is the match those are the metrics of email marketing, then you can put all of your effort in figuring out What are the cool things that I can do and say in my emails to get people to reply and click?

10:40.56

Kennedy Kennedy

Once you've done that, you've kind of won the game of email marketing, which is pretty freaking awesome, right? Now, I've been thinking, okay, how do I this in a practical sense? If you'd like to watch me do this on screen, a really lovely viewer of the show a few a few weeks ago sent me one of their emails and said, would you give me some feedback? Would you...

11:00.62

Kennedy Kennedy

critique this. And I said, yeah, can I do it on the show though? Like I'd love you to. So I sat down, i recorded me literally rewriting a professional marketer's email and showing you how I rewrite it using all the techniques that I just talked about. You can watch me do that in that video that's just popped up on screen.

11:17.12

Kennedy Kennedy

If you haven't already, make sure you hit subscribe and like, leave me a comment below. if you've got any questions or tell you what you'd like me to cover in a future video. I'd love to do that and I'll catch you really soon.