Marketing: Prompts That Sell
11 min read
Marketing is where most founders try AI first, and where most of them get burned. Not because the tools can't write — they can — but because generic marketing copy is worse than no copy at all. Your customers have deleted a thousand emails that open with "We hope this message finds you well." The job of this lesson is to keep yours out of that folder.
Priya's win-back email, round two
Remember the win-back email Priya built in The Five-Part Prompt? It worked. Eleven of her 38 lapsed members bought the $189 spring pass within a week. Which leaves 27 people who read the email — or didn't — and stayed gone.
The follow-up is a harder piece of writing. Same offer, second ask: get it slightly wrong and it reads like a gym chasing a payment. And this time the five-part structure alone isn't enough, because what's missing from a generic follow-up isn't information. It's her. So she adds the move from Show, Don't Tell and teaches the AI her voice with her own writing:
You're a copywriter for a small, community-focused fitness studio.
Context: I own a boutique studio in Vancouver. 38 members lapsed
over the winter — busy schedules, not bad experiences. Two weeks
ago we emailed them our spring pass offer (10 classes, $189) and
11 came back. This is the follow-up for the 27 who didn't reply.
Here are two emails I wrote myself, so you can hear how I talk:
[PASTE: your March schedule email]
[PASTE: your note introducing the new instructor]
Task: Write a short follow-up win-back email. Same spring pass —
don't stack a discount on top of it.
Format: Under 120 words. Subject line plus body, one call to action.
Constraints: No exclamation points. No "crush your goals" clichés.
No guilt about the silence. It should sound like I typed it
between classes.The draft that came back needed two edits, not a rewrite. That's the bar you're aiming for: something you fix in three minutes instead of fighting for thirty.
Ask for ten, keep two
Social posts punish perfectionism. If you ask for one perfect post, you'll get one average post and spend twenty minutes deciding whether you hate it. Ask for volume instead, then cherry-pick.
Dev's two pizza shops in Columbus do about 40 percent of Friday's sales on a Tuesday. Here's his prompt:
I run two pizza locations in Columbus, Ohio. Tuesdays are dead —
roughly 40% of Friday's volume. Give me 10 different angles for a
Tuesday promo I could run on Instagram and Facebook. For each one:
the offer, a one-line caption, and who it targets (families,
students, or offices ordering late).Six of the ten will be forgettable. Two will be fine. One or two will be genuinely good — and a genuinely good promo every couple of weeks, found in five minutes, beats the perfect campaign you never quite get around to.
Descriptions customers actually read
Service and product descriptions rot quietly. Priya's class page said "Reformer Pilates — all levels welcome," which tells a nervous first-timer nothing. The fix isn't creativity; it's context. Paste your current description, add the three questions customers actually ask before buying, and have the AI rewrite it so those questions are answered in the first two sentences. Hers now opens with what to wear, whether beginners will keep up, and what the first visit costs — the exact things people were DMing her about anyway.
What goes in the prompt
| Marketing job | What to include |
|---|---|
| Email campaign | Two or three past emails in your voice, the exact offer, one clear next step |
| Social posts | The platform, the audience, and a request for 10 options |
| Service description | Your current version, the top three questions buyers ask, what makes you different |
| Promo or ad | The precise offer, the deadline, who it's for |
You're the filter
One rule holds this whole lesson together: the AI drafts, you decide. Customers can smell generic from the subject line, the same way you can tell a form letter from a real one in about a second and a half. Every draft you send unedited is a bet that your customers can't tell the difference. They can. Read it out loud, cut anything you'd never say, and only then hit send.
Try it now
Pull up the last marketing email you sent. Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT along with one older email you're proud of, then ask for a win-back or promo email in the same voice, using the five-part structure. Compare the result to what a bare "write me a marketing email" produces. Five minutes, and you'll never write the six-word version again.