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Using ChatGPT's "Custom Instructions" feature to write better emails

Learn how to use ChatGPT’s custom instructions feature to write better emails.


ChatGPT by OpenAI offers the option to include custom instructions that the AI model will remember for future conversations. Much like coming up with a good prompt, custom instructions help you get better, more tailored responses from ChatGPT. It also saves time and the need to repeat yourself, because the AI model will consider your custom instructions before generating a response.

In this article, we show you how to make the most of custom instructions to enhance your email writing skills. Let’s take a closer look!


Writing emails with ChatGPT custom instructions

ChatGPT’s custom instructions feature is two-fold. First you give ChatGPT contextual information about yourself, and then you describe how you’d like ChatGPT to format its response.

Adding custom instructions in ChatGPT can help you to:

  • Get more relevant results

  • Match your brand tone and style

  • Improve the clarity of the AI output

For example, the Pet Cuts team is using ChatGPT to come up with email ideas and speed up their copywriting time. They use the following commands for their custom instructions:

  1. I work in marketing and communications for a pet salon.

  2. When making suggestions for work-related copy, present the information as an email, beginning with ‘Hi {%recipientFirstname%}’ and signing off with ‘Best wishes, {%userFullname%}’. Please be friendly, but concise. Emails should not be more than 50 words.

Taking the above custom instruction into consideration, the following is the output from ChatGPT for the prompt, ‘Write an auto-response email telling customers Pet Cuts pet salon is on holiday’.

Not bad! The AI model isn’t perfect and sometimes doesn’t consider instructions accurately, so it’s often best to iterate and refine the output you receive from ChatGPT. But that’s still much easier with custom instructions, because a lot of the work is done upfront.

Tips for writing your custom instructions in ChatGPT

For the best possible result first time, here are a few general tips to keep in mind when writing your custom instructions:

  • To improve the relevance of ChatGPT’s responses, it’s helpful to mention formatting. For example, ‘present the information as an email’ or ‘please include two options for a subject line’.

  • To match for tone and style, give ChatGPT notes about your brand’s voice and personality. For example, ‘be friendly’ or ‘remain professional’.

  • To get clearer and more concise outputs that require less editing from a human copywriter, include specific instructions and other context if necessary. For example, ‘emails should not be more than 50 words’ or ‘we are a IT consulting company based in the USA’.

  • To integrate your AI-generated content more seamlessly into your Saved Replies in Email for Trello, you can tell ChatGPT to include variables in its responses. It saves a lot of time if you don’t have to manually type them into your template emails! Visit our help center to learn more about supported variables in Email for Trello.

If you regularly use ChatGPT to write emails and Saved Replies for use with Email for Trello, you can use custom instructions to teach the AI all the variables supported by the Email for Trello Power-Up – and then use them in its response.

In your custom instructions settings panel, simply outline the variables you would like ChatGPT to use before you give your formatting instructions. We’ve made this easy copy-and-paste list that you can use to train the AI:

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How do I set up custom instructions in ChatGPT?

To set your custom instructions in ChatGPT, click on your user name and select ‘Custom instructions’. It’s that simple!


Improve your email copy with custom instructions in ChatGPT

If you regularly use AI tools for writing email copy, you can save a lot of time by including custom instructions in your ChatGPT settings. Custom instructions help you get the best possible response from ChatGPT, so that you can spend minimal time and effort editing the output from the AI model!