AI, Write Like I Talk

A Prompt to Improve GenAI Emails

July 15, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

👋 Heyo, Claymakers!

As I mentioned on LinkedIn, getting good at prompting is a huge unlock for cranking value out of Clay.

Invest time. Get really good at this. And it will open the aperture big time - both for Clay and for integration AI into GTM.

This post is a good starting point, along with the 11 AI prompting tips I shared.

This week’s prompt will help you rewrite AI generated emails to sound more conversational and score higher on best practices. (Like only using 2 words in the subject line and making the copy very easy to understand. 5th grade level.)

But, first, my favorite writing advice that I’ve sent at least over 100x to people.

You bet, this one is getting included.

“Write like you talk”

Here's a simple trick for getting more people to read what you write: write in spoken language… Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas… Written language is more complex, which makes it more work to read. It's also more formal and distant, which gives the reader's attention permission to drift. But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying more than you actually are. - Paul Graham

Seemingly simple and easy, but quite hard in practice. If you don’t know Paul Graham… He’s the Founder of YCombinator, a startup incubator that helped birth AirBnB, DoorDash, Coinbase, and Instacart. He has loads of other good articles here.

So what does this have to do with AI?

The challenge is its very hard to get an actually good sounding email generated by AI.

Like this one (below).

The email is written sounding a bit too robotic and statement driven.

Example of an AI, personalized email

This scored an 81 on Lavender. (They’re an AI Email Coach that makes sure you’re using best practices, then helps you improve. )

(They typically don’t recommend to send an email with any score lower than a 90, so this one wouldn’t meet the bar.)

Prompt: Write like you talk + cold email best practices

After experimenting for some time, I came up with this prompt to improve the AI generated email. The prompt is specifically for Claygent (AI Agent of Clay), so this can be applied to emails at scale.

The improved email

Now, let’s run it through Lavender again.

Check that out! Scored a 90, hell yea. 💪

This is nuanced, but you’ll also notice the email sounds more conversational, more friendly, inviting…

I didn’t know this either, but apparently the optimal length of a subject line is 2 words. Easiest tip to implement ever.

Around the Kiln

Now for a round up of cool posts from around the Kiln…

A Clay Banger

Obaid Durrani dropped a Clay Banger. LP coming soon from Def Jam Records. Check out Obaid dropping rhymes here.

Also, welcome to the team, Obaid!

#GirlsWhoClay

Marina Ghilchik launched a community for women Clay engineers called Girls Who Clay. This is a super cool initiative. She’s got a great point, the community needs more women!

🤜 🤛 Excited to see this grow, Marina!

Clay drops a new homepage

Check out my last post to see how Clay went from horizontal to vertical positioning with a series of screenshots over these to show the evolution.

A couple of cool things about the homepage to call out:

  • Lots os small animations to explore

  • Look at the wires on the left and then on the right

  • Homepage goes from scrolling vertically to horizontal to show the flow from building target lists → personalized emails

That’s all, peace out!

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