Most small business owners I meet have an email list they feel guilty about. They collected the addresses. They meant to write. Then a month went by, then three, and now sending anything feels like showing up to a party you skipped for a year.
Here is the good news. You do not need to become a writer. You need one afternoon, a cup of something warm, and the 20 prompts below. By the time you finish, you will have a month of emails drafted, sorted, and ready to load into whatever email tool you use.
I run these with Claude, but they work in ChatGPT too. The order matters. The first few prompts teach the AI who you are so the rest sound like you instead of like a robot that read a marketing textbook.
Quick definitions
Claude is an AI assistant you talk to in regular sentences. You describe what you need, read what comes back, and edit it. No code, no developer.
A Project is a saved workspace inside Claude where you park your business details once (what you sell, who buys it, how you talk) so you are not re-explaining yourself every email.
A nurture email is an email that teaches, tells a story, or answers a question. It is not asking for the sale. Most of your month should be nurture, with a few clear offers mixed in.
One rule before we start: your customer list, their emails, and their purchase history stay in your email tool. Nothing below needs any of that. These prompts work with general information about your business.
Before you start: set up the sitting (10 minutes)
Open a new Project in Claude (or a fresh chat if you are using ChatGPT). Name it something like "Email Marketing." Then run the first four prompts in order. They do no writing yet. They build the brain the rest of the prompts pull from.
Part 1: teach the AI your business (prompts 1 to 4)
1. The business brief
I am going to describe my business and I want you to remember it for everything we write today. I sell [what you sell] to [who buys it]. They usually come to me because [the problem or moment that brings them in]. The thing they say most often after working with me is [a real compliment or result]. My prices are roughly [range]. Ask me five questions about anything you still need to know before we write emails.
Answer the five questions honestly and in your own words. Typos are fine. The more you sound like yourself here, the more the emails will.
2. The voice sample
Here are three things I have written that sound like me: [paste an email you sent, a social post, and a text message to a customer]. Describe my writing voice in five bullet points. Then list five things I would never say. Use this voice for everything we write today.
If you do not have three samples, paste one and record yourself talking for two minutes about your business, then paste the transcript. Spoken words are the fastest way to get your real voice on the page.
3. The customer questions list
List the 25 questions my customers ask most before they buy, during the work, and after. Use their words, not industry words. Group them into before, during, and after.
Every question on this list is an email waiting to be written. Keep it open. You will come back to it.
4. The month map
Plan a four-week email calendar for my business with two emails a week. Weeks 1 and 3 are teaching and story emails. Weeks 2 and 4 each end with one clear offer email. For each of the 8 emails, give me a working title, the goal, and which customer question it answers. Do not write the emails yet.
Read the map. Swap anything that feels wrong. This is the moment to steer, because everything after this follows the plan.
Part 2: write the month (prompts 5 to 14)
Now the AI knows you. Run these one at a time. After each one, read the draft out loud. If a sentence makes you wince, tell it what you would say instead and ask for a rewrite.
5. The welcome-back email
Write the first email of the month. I have not emailed this list in a while. Be honest about that in one warm sentence, do not apologize more than once, and then give them one useful tip they can use today. Under 200 words. End with a question they can reply to.
That reply question matters. Replies tell your email tool that people want your messages, which helps the rest of the month land in the inbox instead of the promotions tab.
6. The story email
Write email 2 from the calendar. Start with a two-sentence story about a real customer moment (I will fill in the details) and end with the lesson. No sales pitch. 250 words.
7. The "myth" email
Write email 3. Pick the biggest wrong belief my customers have about [your industry] and gently correct it. Use the voice notes from earlier. Make the subject line the myth itself.
8. The first offer email
Write email 4, the week-two offer. Sell [the product or service] to someone who has read the last three emails. Lead with how they will feel after, not with the features. One link, one call to action, no countdown timers.
I say this on every call: sell the destination, not the plane. Nobody wakes up wanting your process. They want the Monday morning where the problem is gone.
9. The behind-the-scenes email
Write email 5. Show what happens behind the scenes in my business on a normal day. Make it feel like a text from a friend. Include one small detail that only someone who does this work would know.
10. The FAQ email
Write email 6. Take the three most common "before" questions from the list you made earlier and answer each in three sentences. Format it so someone can skim on their phone.
11. The comparison email
Write email 7. Compare doing it yourself, hiring the cheapest option, and working with me. Be fair to all three. Do not trash anyone. Help the reader figure out which one they actually are.
12. The second offer email
Write email 8, the week-four offer. Same product as email 4 but a different angle. This time, answer the biggest objection someone would have after reading email 7. One link, one ask.
13. The subject line pass
For each of the 8 emails, give me three subject line options: one plain, one curious, one that sounds like a text from a friend. Under 45 characters each. No exclamation points, no all caps, no emoji.
Pick the plain one more often than you think. Curiosity gets opens. Plain gets trust, and trust is what gets the second open.
14. The preview text pass
Write the preview text (the line that shows next to the subject in the inbox) for all 8 emails. It should add something the subject does not say, not repeat it. Under 90 characters.
Part 3: make it sound like you (prompts 15 to 17)
15. The robot check
Read all 8 emails and flag every sentence that sounds like AI wrote it: anything with "unlock," "elevate," "game-changer," "dive in," or a list of three adjectives in a row. Rewrite each flagged sentence the way I would actually say it.
This one prompt does more for your open rates than any subject line trick. People can smell a template.
16. The one-thing edit
For each email, tell me the ONE thing you want the reader to do or remember. If any email has more than one, cut it down to one and show me what you removed.
17. The phone read
Reformat every email for someone reading on a phone in a parking lot. Paragraphs of one to three sentences. No paragraph longer than four lines. Bold at most one phrase per email.
Part 4: get more out of the sitting (prompts 18 to 20)
18. The reply bank
Based on these 8 emails, list the 10 replies I am most likely to get, and draft a two-sentence response to each in my voice.
Now when someone writes back, you are not staring at a blank screen. You copy, you tweak one word, you send.
19. The social spin
Turn the teaching points from emails 2, 3, 5, and 7 into four short social posts I can share the same week each email goes out. Same voice, same idea, different wrapper.
20. Next month's seed list
Based on everything we wrote today and the customer questions we have not used yet, give me 8 email ideas for next month with a one-line description each. Save them in a list I can paste into a note.
You just turned one sitting into two. Next month you open the Project, paste this list into prompt 4, and start at prompt 5.
Loading it into your email tool
Copy each email into a draft in whatever you use (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Kit, Flodesk, it does not matter). Schedule them two per week, Tuesday and Thursday mornings are a fine default. Put the two offer emails at the end of weeks two and four exactly where the calendar placed them.
Then close the laptop. The whole point of doing this in one sitting is that you do not think about email again until next month.
Frequently asked questions
How long does this actually take?
The first time, plan on two to three hours including reading and editing. The second month is closer to an hour, because prompts 1 through 3 are already saved in your Project and you start at the calendar.
Do I have to send two emails a week?
No. If one a week is what you can keep up with, tell prompt 4 to plan four emails instead of eight and drop one of the offer emails. Consistent beats frequent every time.
What if my list has not heard from me in a year?
Prompt 5 is built for exactly that. One honest sentence, no groveling, then something useful. Most people will not remember how long it has been. The ones who do will respect that you came back.
Will the emails sound like AI?
They will if you skip prompts 1, 2, and 15. The voice sample and the robot check are the two steps most people rush past, and they are the two that make the difference between "this is clearly a template" and "did she write this herself?"
Can I use these prompts in ChatGPT instead of Claude?
Yes. Every prompt here is written in regular sentences, so it works in either. The one difference is the Project feature, which keeps your business brief saved between sessions. ChatGPT has a similar feature called Projects as well.
Is it safe to paste customer information into these prompts?
Do not. Nothing in this post needs a customer's name, email, or purchase history. When a prompt asks for a customer story, change the name and the details that would identify them. Keep your list in your email tool where it belongs.
Want your marketing to sound like you every time?
Here is what most people do not realize. Once you know how to use Claude or ChatGPT, you can automate almost all of your marketing, and email is just the start.
I just trained 450 people on my AI Marketing Machine skill. You install it, answer a few questions, and it takes my 20 years of marketing and puts it into 6 files that live on your laptop. From then on, every time you ask Claude or ChatGPT to write an email, a post, or a sales page, it pulls from those files and writes content that sounds exactly like you. Prompts 1 and 2 above? Already done, permanently.
It is not magic. It is just a new kind of technology, and you do not need to be a developer to use it.
No membership. No subscription. Just one download.