Ben Settle - Email Players 1 - 15 (CONFIRMED - 2025)

This issue is a cult favorite. Settle details a specific psychological trigger: The "You’re Probably Too Smart For This" Close. Instead of hyping a product, you down-sell your intelligence. Example: "Look, 90% of you will delete this because you think you know it all. That’s fine. But for the 10% who realize they’ve been doing this backward… click here." Issue #7 provides three templates of this close applied to physical products, software, and consulting.

Ben Settle’s Email Players is one of the internet’s longer-running newsletters focused on direct-response email marketing, copywriting psychology, and the mindset of a solo creator. Issues 1–15 offer an early, concentrated snapshot of the approach that later made the newsletter influential: short, provocative emails that teach selling through daily writing. This post summarizes the core lessons, highlights what works, and how modern marketers can apply Settle’s methods ethically and effectively. Ben Settle - Email Players 1 - 15

You cannot read Issues 1–15 without immediately bumping into three recurring dogmas that define everything Settle does. This issue is a cult favorite

The real value of Email Players #1–15 isn’t the snark—it’s the mechanics. Each issue includes: By issue #12

By issue #12, Settle introduces his "Retro-Funnel" concept—using old-school direct mail postcards to drive people to an email list. The twist: the emails themselves are plain-text, personal, and often sent from a phone.

Most marketers were obsessing over click-funnels in 2016–2017. Settle used issues #9 and #11 to argue that funnels are "digital debt"—they look good on a whiteboard but fail in real inboxes. Instead, he proposed the "one-email sale," where a single, well-crafted message drives the entire transaction.