4 tips for better results with AI email writing

The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude AI is transforming our work routine and our daily lives in general. The key: saving valuable time on tasks that are often boring or repetitive, such as email writing. Studies show that AI can save us up to 40% of the time spent sending and replying to emails. 

But there’s a catch: what we gain in speed, we sometimes lose in personalisation. Many professional messages created with an AI email generator can sound too generic or even ‘dehumanised’. 

In this article, we’ll share key insights and practical advice on how to use AI for email writing while keeping personalisation, tone, clarity, and accuracy in mind. By the end, you’ll know exactly how to create effective prompts to get the best results. 

1. Clearly define the goal of your email

Before you start writing an email, pause for a moment and ask yourself: What is the goal of this message? Do I want to inform, persuade, request something, or simply keep in touch? Defining this clearly saves you time and helps any AI email generator you use to produce more accurate and relevant content. 

This step is essential because when you work with an AI email writer, you give instructions to a machine as a prompt. If the goal isn’t clear, the instruction will likely be confusing or incomplete, and the result may be ineffective or hard to understand. 

Take a moment to define the purpose, the audience, and the outcome you expect. This gives the email writing AI a solid starting point and increases the chances that your email will achieve its goal on the very first try. 

2. Write a clear and specific prompt for your email

Once you’ve defined the goal of your email, the next step is to turn it into a concrete prompt email for the AI. Here, precision and detail make all the difference: the clearer and more specific you are, the better the result will be. 

In a professional context, some practical elements to include are: 

• Who is writing the email: your role, company, or department. 
• Who will receive the email: client, colleague, supplier, end user, etc. 
• Industry or sector: mentioning the industry helps the AI email writer use the proper terminology and tone if it’s a work email. 
• Specific purpose: to inform, persuade, invite to an event, follow up, etc. 
• Approximate length: short, medium, or detailed, depending on the need. 

For example, instead of simply writing “Write an email about the new product”, a complete prompt could be: 

“You are a customer support manager at a software company. Write a personalised email of around 120 words for a specific client. Purpose: to reply to their query about our new product X and encourage them to try it with a free demo. Greet them by name, mention their previous query, and briefly explain how the product can help them. Keep the tone friendly and approachable without being too formal.”

Otro ejemplo, para un correo interno:

“Write a follow-up email for the sales team members of a logistics company. Purpose: to remind them to send their weekly reports before Friday. Use a friendly and motivating tone, around 100 words, and mention the importance of being punctual with reporting.”

The idea is that the AI email generator should ‘see the big picture’, not just the message text. The more context you provide, the more natural, personalised, and effective the AI email writing will be. 

3. Refine your email with additional context and relevant details

After generating the first draft with the AI email writer, refine the text by adding or adjusting details to make it more effective and personalised. This step ensures the message stops feeling generic and better reflects your objectives. 

Some ideas to perfect an AI-generated email: 

• Add recipient background: information about previous queries, interactions, or purchases. 
• Include specific data: dates, figures, benefits, or important links. 
• Adjust tone and style: closer, more formal, or motivating depending on your relationship with the recipient. 
• Define concrete actions: what you want the reader to do after reading the email. 

For example, after generating a first draft, you could modify the prompt like this: 

“The first draft is fine, but now focus it on Anna, who asked about our product X last week. Highlight three key benefits, add a link to schedule a demo, and keep a friendly and motivating tone without being overly formal.”

Refining the message after the initial result ensures that the AI system produces a more natural, accurate, and persuasive email. 

4. Adjust tone, verify accuracy, and give your email a human touch

While using AI to write emails can be very helpful and efficient, you should never send a generated message without reviewing it first. This step is essential to ensure your email is clear, appropriate, and authentic. 

Some recommendations for perfecting your email: 

• Make manual adjustments: correct phrases or words that sound odd or repetitive. The AI may use expressions that aren’t locally natural or that you wouldn’t normally use. 
• Check for clarity: make sure the message communicates exactly what you intend. 
• Adapt the tone: ensure the style and level of familiarity match your relationship with the recipient. 
• Remove unnatural words or expressions: AI sometimes adds overly formal terms, clichés, or filler phrases that don’t match your natural way of writing. 
• Confirm details and links: ensure dates, figures, names, and links are accurate. 

Spending a few minutes reviewing, adjusting, and perfecting your email improves clarity and accuracy while also adding a human touch, making the message feel authentic and approachable, which is something no AI can fully replicate. 

How can you tell if an email is AI-generated?  

At first glance, it can be difficult to tell, but some signs indicate AI may have generated an email: 

• Language that is too generic or impersonal: sentences that sound correct but lack “personality” or specific references. 
• Excessive formality or clichés: expressions like “Dear valued user” or “in the framework of our sincerest intentions” that aren’t commonly used in everyday communication. 
• Lack of context or specific details: the message may be technically correct, but it leaves out key information that a person would normally include (e.g., names, exact dates, or references to previous conversations). 

You can use free tools like QuillBot, Scribbr or Grammarly to check if a text was AI-generated, but keep in mind that results are not always 100% accurate and can vary between platforms. 

Ultimately, the most important thing is how you use AI: give clear instructions, review the output, and add your own human touch. This way, you create emails that are clear, authentic, and effective, utilising the best of technology without losing natural communication. 

Write professional and effective emails with one.com Webmail 

If you want to put these tips into practice, one.com Webmail is the perfect tool. In addition to creating email addresses with custom domains, all plans include Aida AI, which provides a personalised AI writing assistant designed specifically for email writing. 

With Aida AI you can: 

• Choose the language, tone, and even the recipient’s gender. 
• Define the message length according to your needs. 
• Add specific context to make the output more precise and natural. 

This makes writing emails faster and easier, while keeping that human touch that makes all the difference.