The thirty minutes you never get back
Most people do not lose their day to hard work. They lose it to the seventeen emails that each took four minutes longer than they should have. The reply you rewrote three times. The follow up you drafted, deleted, and drafted again. The message to the angry customer that sat in your drafts folder until lunchtime because you could not find the opening line.
AI is very good at exactly this. Not because it writes better than you do, but because it produces a serviceable first draft in six seconds, and editing something is far easier than facing a blank box.
In plain English
- Prompt:
- The instruction you type into an AI tool. Everything you say to it before it answers.
- Context:
- The background you give the AI so it knows what it is dealing with: who you are writing to, what happened before, what you want.
- Tone:
- How a message sounds. Warm, formal, brisk, apologetic. You can ask for it by name.
The four ingredients of a good email prompt
Every email prompt that works has the same four parts: who it is going to, what you want to happen, what tone, and how long. Leave one out and you get corporate wallpaper.
โ Weak prompt
Prompt
Write an email about the project delay.
Output
Dear Valued Stakeholder, I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to inform you regarding certain developments pertaining to the project timeline.
No recipient, no goal, no tone, no length. You get something you would never actually send.
โ Good prompt
Prompt
Write a short email to a client, Priya, telling her the report will land Thursday instead of Tuesday because our data supplier was late. Apologise once, do not grovel, offer a call if she wants one. Warm but professional. Under 120 words.
Output
Hi Priya, a quick heads up: the report will now reach you Thursday rather than Tuesday. Our data supplier ran late and I would rather send you something accurate than something rushed. Sorry for the shuffle. Happy to jump on a call if that causes you a problem.
Recipient, reason, goal, tone and length. It is roughly 90 percent sendable on the first try.
Write an email to [who they are and your relationship to them].
Goal: [what you want them to do or know].
Key facts to include: [two or three points].
Tone: [warm and professional / brisk / formal].
Length: under [120] words.
Give me one clear subject line, no fluff.
Checkpoint
A good email prompt names the recipient, the goal, the tone and the length. Missing any one of those is what produces generic output.
Replying to something long
The most useful email trick is not writing, it is replying. Paste the message you received, say what your answer is in rough words, and let the AI arrange it.
Here is an email I received. Below it is my rough answer in note form.
Turn my notes into a clear reply that addresses every point they raised, in order.
Keep it under 150 words. Polite and direct.
THEIR EMAIL:
[paste it]
MY ROUGH ANSWER:
[yes to the first thing, no to the second, ask when they need it by]
Chasing an unanswered email
Nobody enjoys writing the third follow up. The trick is to make it easy to reply to rather than guilt inducing.
Write a short follow up to an email I sent [10] days ago that has not been answered.
It was about [subject]. I need [the decision / the file / a yes or no] by [date].
Assume they are busy, not rude. Do not use the phrase just circling back.
Give them an easy out: offer a one line reply option.
Under 70 words.
The angry customer
This is where AI earns its keep, because it is not upset and you are. Ask it to write the reply, then read it back as if you were the customer.
A customer has sent this complaint. Write a reply that acknowledges the problem
specifically (not a generic apology), states what we are doing about it, and
gives a date. Do not be defensive, do not blame them, do not over-promise.
Calm and human. Under 120 words.
THEIR MESSAGE:
[paste it]
WHAT WE CAN ACTUALLY DO:
[the refund / the fix / the timeline]
Never paste a customer's full name, account number, address or payment details into a chatbot. Swap them for placeholders before you paste. The complaint itself is usually all the context the AI needs.
Do's and don'ts
Do read every word before you send. AI writes confident sentences that are occasionally about things that never happened.
Do give it two of your own past emails and ask it to match your style. This is the single biggest upgrade available to you.
Do ask for a shorter version. Almost every AI draft is 30 percent too long, and typing shorter, cut the pleasantries usually fixes it.
Do keep the odd human line you would actually say. One real sentence rescues an otherwise flat message.
Don't send anything containing a promise, a price or a date you have not personally checked.
Don't let it open with I hope this email finds you well. Ban the phrase in your prompt.
Don't use it for the message that really matters: the condolence note, the resignation, the apology to a colleague you genuinely hurt. Those should cost you something to write.
Don't paste confidential information. Salaries, contracts, medical details and anything covered by a signed agreement stay out of the chat box.
Keeping your own voice
The failure mode of AI email is not bad writing. It is beige writing: correct, polite, and completely characterless. Everyone on the team starts sounding like the same mid-ranking diplomat.
The cure takes one minute. Save three emails you wrote that sound like you, keep them in a note, and paste them in alongside your instruction.
Add this line to any email prompt: Match the voice in the examples below, including sentence length and how formal I am. Then paste two or three of your own emails underneath.
Read the result out loud. If it does not sound like something you would say to that person, change it. You are the editor. The AI is a very fast, slightly bland assistant who never gets tired.
๐ Quiz
Question 1 of 4Which four ingredients make an email prompt work?