The ultimate prompt to write effective emails faster

Whether you’re replying to a customer, pitching an idea, or coordinating with a teammate, crafting a clear and effective email isn’t always easy. The best emails are concise without feeling cold, professional yet still human — and above all, they get the message across.

Instead of endlessly rewriting your draft, why not let AI help you fine-tune it, step by step? In this blog post, we’ll break down a powerful, all-in-one prompt into smaller, focused instructions — each designed to improve a specific aspect of your email. Just copy, paste, and adapt them to fit your situation.

Setting the stage

Before asking AI to improve your email, it’s helpful to tell it what role it’s playing, how it should respond, and what you expect. This upfront guidance helps ensure your final email sounds natural — more like it came from you, and less like it came from an AI.

Here’s how we start the prompt:

You are an AI writing assistant that helps improve business emails by making them clearer, more concise, and more professional while maintaining a natural, approachable tone.

Your responses should feel like they were written by a thoughtful professional — confident and respectful, but never stiff or robotic.

Next, give the AI a bit of context. Include details like the recipient’s name, email address, role, and what you want to achieve with the message.

I’m writing an email to [Name] ([Email Address]), who is the [Job Title] at [Company]. The purpose of the email is to [Brief Purpose — e.g., request a meeting, provide an update, make an offer].

Finally, explain what you want the AI to do. By clearly asking it to improve your draft step by step, you’re guiding it to follow a structured approach.

I’ll provide a draft email, and I want you to help me improve it step-by-step. You can find the different steps below.

Step 1: Strengthen the writing

The first step focuses on improving the clarity and flow of your draft email. At this stage, we want to make sure your message is easy to read and understand. Notice how the prompt below outlines specific goals for the AI to follow.

It’s also important to clearly state that this is step one of the revision process. This keeps the AI focused on improving writing quality — without jumping ahead to other aspects.

Here’s what the prompt looks like for this step:

Rewrite my draft email to improve clarity and flow without changing the core message.

This is the first revision step — focus on making the message easier to read and more polished while preserving its intent.

Make sure that:

• The message is brief, to the point, and easy to understand.
• Language is simple and clear.
• The tone is polite, professional, and respectful — even in disagreement.
• Repetition and filler words are removed.
• Sentences and paragraphs are well-structured for readability.

Step 2: Add a personal touch

Building a personal connection with your recipient can make your email more engaging and memorable. If they’ve recently shared something noteworthy — like a job change, a published article, or a promotion — it’s a great opportunity to acknowledge it.

In this step, we’re asking the AI to do a bit of research for us by checking the recipient’s public social media profiles. If it finds something relevant, the AI will use it to craft a thoughtful opening.

Also note that we’re telling the AI to skip this step if no relevant information is available. This prevents it from forcing an unnecessary or generic comment.

Here’s how the prompt looks:

Search the recipient’s social media profiles for publicly available information such as recent posts, job changes, birthdays, promotions, shared articles, or notable achievements. If relevant information is found, craft a brief, personalized introduction (one or two sentences) to include at the beginning of the email. Ensure it aligns with the overall tone — professional, friendly, and respectful.

If no relevant information is found, skip this step.

Step 3: Match the tone

It’s usually a good idea to align your tone with the tone of the person you’re replying to. If they write in very formal language, you don’t want to come across as too casual. If their message feels relaxed and conversational, responding too formally might feel stiff or distant.

In this step, we’re asking the AI to analyze the recipient’s tone — by looking at the quoted message included in the email draft — and adjust our reply to match it.

For example:

• If the recipient writes, “Dear Mr. Smith, I would like to formally request…”, a formal tone works best.
• If they say, “Hey John, quick question for you…”, a casual tone is more appropriate.
• If they’re enthusiastic, “Super excited to move forward!”, it’s fine to mirror that energy in your reply.

Here’s what the prompt looks like:

If the email draft includes a quoted message from the recipient, adjust the tone of the reply to align with the tone used in that message. Pay attention to whether their tone is formal, casual, enthusiastic, neutral, etc., and adapt the response accordingly while keeping it polished and professional.

Match the tone in a balanced way: don’t exaggerate formality, casualness, or enthusiasm — keep the response authentic and appropriate.

If there’s no quoted message, skip this step.

Step 4: Highlight key points

Most people don’t read emails word for word — they scan to quickly pick up the main idea. That’s why it’s important to make your key points stand out, so your message doesn’t get lost in the details.

In this step, we’re asking the AI to identify and emphasize the most important parts of the email: what the message is about, and what action (if any) we want the recipient to take.

A good rule of thumb: highlight no more than one or two sentences. Focus on the core takeaway and the call to action — the parts you want the recipient to remember or act on. Avoid over-highlighting, since too much emphasis can dilute the impact.

Here’s the prompt for this step:

Identify the key parts of the email that communicate the main message (the reason for writing) and the call to action (what I’m asking the recipient to do). Emphasize these key sentences by making them bold using markdown formatting.

The emphasis should make it easy for the recipient to quickly understand the purpose of the email and what action is expected.

Aim to highlight only the most critical sentences to keep the emphasis clear and effective.

Step 5: Proofread

The final step is all about giving your email a thorough check. Even with AI’s help, small errors or awkward phrasing can slip through. Proofreading ensures your message is clean, professional, and ready to send.

In this step, we’re asking the AI to carefully review the entire email to catch any remaining issues.

Here’s the prompt for this step:

Carefully proofread the final version of the email for grammar, punctuation, and overall clarity.

• Make sure all sentences are clear, concise, and well-structured.
• Check for any awkward phrasing or typos.
• Ensure the tone is consistent, professional, and natural.
• Confirm the email is polished and ready to send — no placeholders, formatting errors, or overlooked issues.

Time to wrap up

Now that we’ve outlined all five revision steps, it’s time to let AI do its magic. In this final instruction, we’re telling the AI to follow each step in order — and to return both the final, polished email and a summary of what was improved at each stage.

I’m going to give you my draft email. Follow the steps above to improve it. After completing all steps, output the final, improved version of the email. Then, provide a brief summary for each step explaining the changes and improvements you made. Only output the final email and the step summaries — no additional information.

And that’s it! With this structured prompt, you’re set up to write clearer, more effective emails — faster. Give it a try and see how much easier professional writing can be.

How to test the prompt yourself

Ready to put this prompt into action? Testing it is simple — you don’t need any coding skills or special tools. Here’s how you can try it out:

1. Choose your AI tool. You can use any AI writing assistant that supports custom prompts, like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
2. Copy the prompt. Download the complete prompt here.
3. Paste the prompt. Open a new chat in your AI tool and paste the entire prompt as one message.
4. Add your draft email. Follow the instructions in the prompt: provide your draft email after the prompt to let the AI get to work.
5. Review the output. The AI will return your improved email and a summary of each improvement step. Check if the tone, clarity, and emphasis feel right — and make small adjustments if needed.

Tried it out? We’d love to hear how it worked for you!