How to use AI to write an email: a simple step-by-step guide

Let’s be honest, your email inbox can feel like a warzone. If you’re anything like me, you spend a huge chunk of your week just trying to stay afloat. A Microsoft report even found that some people spend a whopping 8.8 hours a week on email. That’s an entire workday gone, just on writing, reading, and replying.

What if you had an assistant who could handle all the grunt work for you? That’s pretty much what AI can be for your inbox. It can help you draft emails, save a ton of time, and sharpen your communication, which frees you up for the work that actually moves the needle. This guide will walk you through how to use AI to write an email, from simple first drafts to smarter replies that sound exactly like you.

How to use AI to write an email: what you’ll need to get started

Before we jump in, let’s make sure you have the basics covered. Don’t worry, it’s a short list.

• An email client you’re comfortable with (like Gmail or Outlook).

• A clear goal for your email (what do you want the reader to do?).

• An AI writing tool. This could be a feature already in your inbox, a browser extension, or a more advanced tool that plugs into your other apps.

A guide on how to use AI to write an email in 4 steps

Here’s a simple, four-step process to get you from a blinking cursor to a finished, AI-assisted email.

Step 1 of how to use AI to write an email: Choose the right AI email writer for you

Not all AI tools are built the same. The best one for you really depends on what you need it to do. They usually fall into a few camps:

• Built-in assistants: Tools like Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot are now baked right into Gmail and Outlook. They’re super convenient when you just need to fire off a quick reply or get the gist of a long email thread. The main drawback is that they don’t know anything outside of the current conversation, so their context is limited.

• Browser extensions: Tools like Grammarly or ChatGPT Writer work on pretty much any website, not just in your email. They’re handy for checking your grammar or finding a better way to phrase a sentence. But just like the built-in assistants, they don’t have any real knowledge about your business or your specific way of talking to customers.

• Integrated support platforms: For work emails, especially in support or sales, there are specialized AI tools made to fit right into your workflow. These go way beyond just writing sentences. They connect to your company’s internal knowledge to give you accurate answers and can even handle repetitive tasks on their own.

While the basic tools are a decent place to start, you’ll see the biggest time savings from an AI that actually understands your business.

Step 2 of how to use AI to write an email: Craft a clear and specific prompt

There’s an old saying in the world of AI: garbage in, garbage out. The quality of the email you get from an AI is a direct result of the quality of your instructions. A vague prompt gets you a bland, generic email. A detailed prompt gets you something you can actually use.

To get the best results, try using this simple formula for your prompts:

• Audience: Who are you writing to? (A new customer, a long-time client, your boss?)

• Goal: What’s the point of the email? (To schedule a meeting, answer a question, follow up on a sale?)

• Key Points: What are the 2-3 things you absolutely have to include?

• Tone: How should it sound? (Formal, friendly, empathetic, urgent?)

Here’s what that looks like in action:

• Weak Prompt: "Write a follow-up email."

• Strong Prompt: "Draft a friendly but professional follow-up email to Jane Doe. Remind her about the project proposal we talked about on Tuesday and ask if she has any questions. Suggest a quick 15-minute call next week to finalize the details."

See the difference? The second prompt gives the AI everything it needs to create a genuinely helpful draft, saving you from having to rewrite a boring template.

Prompt Element	Weak Prompt	Strong Prompt
Audience	Unspecified	Jane Doe
Goal	Unspecified (follow-up)	Remind about proposal, answer questions, schedule a call
Key Points	None	Project proposal from Tuesday, 15-minute call next week
Tone	Unspecified	Friendly but professional
Result	Generic, unusable template	Specific, helpful draft

Step 3 of how to use AI to write an email: Generate, review, and refine the draft

Think of the AI’s first attempt as a starting point, not the final word. It’s a team effort. Once you have that initial text, you can work with the AI to tweak it until it’s just right.

Most AI writers let you give simple follow-up commands to adjust the text. You can tell it things like:

• "Make this sound more formal."

• "Can you shorten this paragraph?"

• "Add more detail about the second point."

• "Change the tone to be more empathetic."

After a couple of quick adjustments, you should have a draft that’s about 95% of the way there. But before you hit send, you have to add that last 5% of human touch. Give it one final read-through to double-check for accuracy, maybe add a personal comment, or swap out a word to make it sound more like you. This is the step that keeps your emails from feeling cold and robotic.

Step 4 of how to use AI to write an email: Go beyond basic drafts with context-aware AI

Here’s the problem with most AI email writers: they only know what you tell them in that one prompt. They can’t see your past conversations, your company’s help articles, or how your team has handled similar situations before. This means they can help you write faster, but they can’t always help you write the right thing.

This is where more advanced AI platforms really shine. They connect to all of your business’s scattered knowledge to give responses that are not only fast but also incredibly relevant and accurate.

For instance, tools like eesel AI are designed for this exact challenge. Instead of just generating generic text, eesel’s AI Copilot plugs directly into your helpdesk (like Zendesk or Intercom) and your knowledge bases (like Confluence, Google Docs, or even past support tickets). It doesn’t just guess at an answer; it drafts replies based on how your team has actually fixed the same problems in the past. This makes sure every response is consistent, correct, and sounds just like your brand. It’s a big leap from just writing emails faster to getting the right answer, every single time.

Pro tips for how to use AI to write an email effectively

Even with a great tool, a little know-how can make a big difference. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your AI email assistant.

• Always add a personal touch. Just because an AI wrote the first draft doesn’t mean it should sound like a robot sent it. A quick, genuine closing line or a nod to a previous conversation can make a good email great. Remember, the AI is your assistant, not your replacement.

• Use an AI that learns from you. The best results come from an AI that gets your style and your business. A lot of people are searching for an AI that can "learn how I write," and that’s exactly what platforms like eesel AI are built to do. By analyzing your company’s past support tickets and documents, it automatically picks up on your team’s voice and solutions without you have to do any manual training.

• Keep your data secure. It’s totally normal to be a little wary about what an AI does with your company’s information. Some everyday AI tools might use your prompts to train their models for everyone. But enterprise-level platforms like eesel AI are built with security as a top priority. Your data is only used to power your own private AI agents, it’s never shared or used for anything else.

• Test it out before you go live. For any business, trust is everything. Before you let an AI start talking to your customers, you need to be confident it’s going to do a good job. eesel AI has a simulation mode that lets you test your setup on thousands of your actual past tickets. You can see exactly how the AI would have replied, which gives you a clear picture of its performance and accuracy before it ever interacts with a real customer.

How to use AI to write an email: your new email superpower

Using AI to write an email doesn’t have to be some big, complicated thing. It’s pretty straightforward: pick the right tool for the job, give it clear instructions, polish the final draft, and, for the best results, use an AI that actually gets your business.

This isn’t about replacing the human element in communication. It’s about giving it a boost. By letting AI handle the repetitive, time-sucking parts of writing emails, you and your team are free to focus on what people do best: building relationships and solving tricky problems.

How to use AI to write an email: take your email writing from fast to intelligent

If you’re ready to graduate from basic email drafts and give your team an AI assistant that truly gets your business, eesel AI is worth a look. It plugs right into the tools you already use, learns from your company’s unique knowledge, and can be up and running in minutes.

Try eesel AI for free and see how much time you can get back in your day.