Hold up. Before you send another email using that dusty old launch template, you need to hear this. If you’re a coach or a course creator, the world of email marketing is shifting under your feet. What worked in 2024? Dead. What crushed in 2025? Already going cold.

Inboxes are filled with AI-written spam. Open rates are falling. Attention is vanishing. But right in the middle of this chaos? A big, shiny, golden opportunity for the coaches who know how to be real. This isn’t the time to panic. It’s time to rise.

This is your blueprint for winning the inbox war in 2026.

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!

00:01.26

Kennedy Kennedy

00:23.82

Kennedy Kennedy

01:54.07

Kennedy Kennedy

Hello, happy email marketing Wednesday. How the devil are you? do you know what's crazy to me? Only about 25%, a quarter of you who tune in into the show are actually subscribed to it. That's wild. That means I don't know that I can get all of these these amazing videos and this content to you every single week when I release a new episode. So if you're one of the people who's not yet subscribed, but you're watching the show, make sure you hit subscribe to this right now. And that means I know that you're enjoying what I'm doing for you here. I'll keep doing it. I'll keep doing more stuff like this, showing up and sharing all this stuff for free. And it also means for you that you make sure that these new videos show up in your feed every single email marketing Wednesday, whether you remember to go and check them out or not. So make sure you hit subscribe.

02:40.82

Kennedy Kennedy

and all of that good stuff. In case you don't know, I've got a brand new course called Email Marketing Sorted, where I peel back the curtain on the three different psychological techniques that I used and actually applied to take one of my offers from $27,000 sales to over half a million dollars in sales. It was just three psychological principles, and I put them all together in this Email Marketing Sorted program. And I decided for tuning into this to this channel that I'm going to give it to you for free. so you can just go to emailmarketingsorted.com, watch, enjoy, and apply the whole thing. I keep hitting my, what's that called? Not my elbow, chin.

03:17.94

Kennedy Kennedy

03:32.47

Kennedy Kennedy

When we see more and more AI, that means ah we we see that more people are getting more exposed to more advertising. People are producing them with AI. We're seeing that even on television now, right? And also because we don't know what to trust now because it is it ai is it real levels of trust are going down i mean for fuck's sake have you seen the woofy dog ads where it looks like this amazing dog it plays with your kids and other da da du and then people are ordering it it's like this absolute piece of shit that is coming through it's absolutely it's absolutely crazy so all of these things and this is not the only example there's lots of things that people are buying online and

04:12.18

Kennedy Kennedy

And it's just showing up and it is not anything like what they thought it was going to be like. So that means trust going down. COSA ads is going up, which means getting people into your list is going up, going up.

04:23.61

Kennedy Kennedy

04:43.29

Kennedy Kennedy

is realize because people are so overwhelmed with their attention, it's been pulled in lots of different directions, we need to have what I call a new subscriber automation. And the job of that is to get someone who, as soon as they join your email list, to get them to buy something, anything for you, anything from you, for the very first time.

05:04.52

Kennedy Kennedy

That's all it has to do, is get them to buy something for the very first time. And the reason you want to set this up so when someone joins your email list and then they immediately start receiving these emails, which offer them something, is that's that's when you've got most of their attention. Think about your own behavior. You join someone's email list. The but very first few days, you might read every one of their emails. And then after a week or so, you read every other email. And then after a few more days, you read every third email. And before you know it, it's a bit like a gym membership. You've sort of forgotten to go and check it out at all.

05:35.48

Kennedy Kennedy

So if you make sure you've got a really good automation when someone joins your email list, you are going to hit them with your best emails at the very time when you've got most of their attention.

05:47.19

Kennedy Kennedy

Your first few emails should be getting between 100 and 85%, between and open That means you've got 85% to 100% of the attention of all the people who you paid to actually bring into your email list. What most people have been teaching us all to do for decades now is to nurture the hell out of people and not try and sell too early. The problem with that is, if you look at your general open rate of your emails, you'll notice that they're between, i don't know, we've got some clients who are as low as 20%, but they're usually 35% 40%.

06:20.63

Kennedy Kennedy

That means you've paid for 100% of those leads, but only 40% to maybe 50% of them are opening your emails. Essentially, that means you just paid double for every one of those leads.

06:33.60

Kennedy Kennedy

When leads are already going up in price, that is a terrible, terrifying and terrible. A terrible, that's a made up word. A terrible and terrifying thing to be doing. We need to stop doing that. So what we're going to do is we're going offer people the best help we can give them from the very beginning of our relationship with them. They've joined your email list because they want to find out how you can solve their problem. Because in your fancy lead magnet, the carrot you've dangled in front of them, you said, I can solve your problem. They join your list and we've got to solve it for them. So they join your email list. Every single person who joins your email list automatically goes through these emails. So they get your best emails, which are talking about your best solution to the problem that you solve.

07:15.06

Kennedy Kennedy

And for you, As the coach, as the expert, as the person who actually helps people, it means that you get to make sales within days of someone joining your email list.

07:26.46

Kennedy Kennedy

How cool is that? like Rather than having to go, going spend the money or the time on all this advertising and promotion, and then within a few months, I'll see if I end up with some sales. lot of us haven't got deep burn enough pockets to do that. Like the big gurus can do that because they've got really deep pockets. They've got a lot of experience. They've got a lot of cash in the bank and they've got time to waste.

07:46.90

Kennedy Kennedy

We don't have that, right? So we want to get somebody to go from joining your email list to buying at least a percent of those people to do that so that we can actually Cashflow paying for advertising. The number one reason I see people going out of business and stop running ads is because they're like, they're not turning into sales. Actually, they're not just they're just not turning into sales fast enough to pay for more advertising. That's kind of what's going on. So, and by the way, those of you who are in my automated email engine program,

08:12.25

Kennedy Kennedy

This is exactly what you have in place, right? This is where you go, someone joins your email list. We have what I call our automated email engine running for the first 30 to 60 days to actually turn more people into customers, into clients, into applications and phone calls or however you convert people.

08:29.08

Kennedy Kennedy

09:02.75

Kennedy Kennedy

When someone joins your email list, you've got a whole bunch of people who are going to buy in the first 30 to 60 days. But you've also got a bunch of people who won't. And that is money you can still mine for. That is sales you can still mine for. There are people you can still help.

09:17.69

Kennedy Kennedy

they just need a little bit longer. So what we're going to do is once somebody, what I call, graduates the engine, they they complete the automations that when they first join your email list, we're going to just keep in touch with them. We're going to keep in touch with them for longer so that when they are ready to buy, we are ready to serve them, right?

09:38.37

Kennedy Kennedy

We're ready to serve them. We're ready to make the sale. We are in their inbox. Like the number one reason that people don't buy from you is that they've forgotten who you are, right? And especially in a world of what I call over automation, where emails are automated and then the the content of the email is automated by AI and it's automated, automated, automated.

09:57.91

Kennedy Kennedy

live legit emails cut through. So what you want to do in those live automat and those like not live automat those live emails is you want to be as topical about what's going on right now as possible.

10:11.40

Kennedy Kennedy

So if something interesting has just happened to you, maybe it's your birthday, maybe it's the new year, maybe... There's some world events, like some Netflix series you've been watching. I know when the was when they showed the the first series of Wednesday a few years ago now, right? I remember talking about that in my emails. I'll talk about what my cats are up to or where I've been it on holiday or where I'm currently on vacation.

10:33.46

Kennedy Kennedy

Why? Because in a world of over-automation where AI is writing everything, that's the stuff that cuts through. I've got another video about how to do that and the exact um sequence and methodology I use for those long-term emails. I'll link to you that to that at the end It's a free video. It's actually just here on YouTube. but I'll give you the to that at the very end. So that's two parts of this. We've got the the automated emails, the new subscriber automations. We've got the the live email campaigns, and that might be the live day-to-day emails. But also that might be if you're doing a live launch of something. Maybe you've got a challenge. Maybe you've got you're opening your program up so you can bring in new clients for your coaching program. That's your live emails. and the third one is what I call, and this is really, really important. This is where the maximum profit is, right? And it's what I call ascension campaigns. Once someone has already bought from you, statistically speaking, they are 50% more likely to buy from you again. That basically means for every two people who you can get to buy from you using your automations and your live emails for the first time. They've bought you the first time For every two people who buy for the first time, one of them is significant is is basically going to buy something else from you if you have stuff in place and only if you have stuff in place to do that, which basically means you can really jack up the amount of profit and money in the bank you get to keep which allows you to liquidate for more ad spend, allow you to have a lovely lifestyle, do all things you want to do, have more freedom, solve more problems, you know have an impact on the world, and of course, support your family. right So what we're going to do is once someone has bought something from you, we're going to have a bunch of offers that we can send just to people who already buy us. And they're go to be called Ascension campaigns. So what should be what should you be offering in these Ascension campaigns? Well,

12:25.83

Kennedy Kennedy

You're going to do um you're goingnna do one of three different things. There's three different types of ascension offer you can make to people in these emails, right? the what The first one is what I call solving adjacent problems. So let's imagine on the front end, you are giving people a workout program.

12:43.96

Kennedy Kennedy

Right. That's what you're getting and people to buy as your main offer. I call it the Rome offer. The all roads lead to Rome offer. It's your flagship offer, whatever you might want to call it. You've got your fitness program, which is going to be your your your workout program. So an adjacent offer might be a nutrition offer or something to do with sleep.

13:01.02

Kennedy Kennedy

Right. Or, for example, we have a client who works with supporting people who are so who she supports people who are supporting people with dementia. Right. So carers ah supporting family members and friends who have dementia. Really amazing work in a very, very difficult time.

13:19.19

Kennedy Kennedy

What's an adjacent problem? Well, I would say you need to be looking at grief and preparing for grief. That's another adjacent problem. OK, let's we've also got another client. and we've actually got a few clients who are in the world of singing tuition. teaching people how to sing, okay? whether it's for a hobby or professionally or auditioning, in that area, we've probably got, I mean, I would say definitely in double figures of singing related ah clients, right? and And so imagine you've got singing. Well, what's an adjacent problem? What about songwriting or or recording your music? Again, adjacent problems. Another version of a an ascension offer would be personalization. So rather than just being a self-study thing, is there some kind of coaching solution where they get a level of personalization?

14:05.91

Kennedy Kennedy

One of my favorites is what I call a proximity offer. And that is you increase the level of proximity they get to either the guru, the thought leader, that's going to be you, or or or one of the coaches. So that's going to be a higher level of coaching, maybe ah a smaller, much more intimate group coaching, or it could be masterminds. It could be one-to-one coaching.

14:27.48

Kennedy Kennedy

14:53.16

Kennedy Kennedy

See you later.