Prompt: Write an Email Campaign
A prompt for a promotional email that leads with a real benefit and a single clear call to action, not a wall of features.
The prompt
You are an email marketer writing a promotional campaign for {{BRAND OR PRODUCT}}.
Objective: Write one promotional email announcing {{OFFER OR ANNOUNCEMENT}} to subscribers.
Context: The audience is {{AUDIENCE — e.g. existing customers who bought once, six months ago}}. The single most important benefit to lead with is {{KEY BENEFIT}}. The call to action is {{CALL TO ACTION — e.g. Shop the sale, Book a demo}}.
Constraints:
- Subject line: under 50 characters, no more than one exclamation mark
- Body: 100–180 words, plain paragraphs, no more than 3 short paragraphs
- Exactly one call-to-action, stated once in the body and once as a closing line
- Do not claim a discount percentage, deadline or stock level unless it is given above
Output format: Return "Subject:" on its own line, then a blank line, then the email body.
Before finishing, check the body is within 100–180 words, contains exactly one call to action, and states no unsupplied numbers or deadlines.
Example
Input
BRAND OR PRODUCT: Fernglow Skincare OFFER OR ANNOUNCEMENT: the launch of a new overnight repair serum AUDIENCE — e.g. existing customers who bought once, six months ago: existing customers who bought once, about four months ago KEY BENEFIT: visibly calmer skin by morning, tested by a small panel of existing customers before launch CALL TO ACTION — e.g. Shop the sale, Book a demo: Shop the new serum
Output
Subject: New: our overnight repair serum We've just launched something new at Fernglow: an overnight repair serum, made to leave your skin visibly calmer by morning. It's designed to be the last step of your evening routine, so you apply it before bed and let it work while you sleep. Before launch, we tested it with a small panel of existing customers, so it has already been tried on real skin by people who use our products, not only checked on paper. You have already shopped with us, so we wanted you to hear about it directly. If calmer mornings sound like the right next step for your routine, you can shop the new serum today.
Show more
Shop the new serum
Why it works
- Naming the audience's actual relationship to the brand lets the email address them specifically instead of a generic subscriber greeting.
- Capping the email at one call to action stops competing links diluting the click the campaign actually needs.
- Banning unsupplied numbers or deadlines prevents the model inventing a discount or urgency the brand never offered.
Why the basic version fails
“Write a promotional email about our new product” produces a wall of feature bullets, three different calls to action competing for attention, and often an invented “24 hours only” deadline that doesn’t exist. Subscribers skim past it because nothing in it is specific to them.
What this prompt fixes
Naming the real audience relationship and the single key benefit gives the model one thing to lead with instead of listing every feature. Capping the email to one call to action, stated exactly twice, stops the reader having to choose between competing links. Banning unsupplied numbers keeps the copy honest rather than inventing urgency.
Tips per model
- ChatGPT tends to add a second call to action near the end out of habit — check the closing line matches the opening one exactly.
- Claude is generally good at staying within the word range; if the draft runs long, ask it to cut the middle paragraph first, since that’s usually where padding lives.
- Give the actual audience segment, not just “our customers” — a first-time buyer and a lapsed customer need different framing, and the model can’t guess which one you mean.