You may have heard a lot of people talk about ChatGPT already, but have you tried it yet? Here is one easy way to use ChatGPT to turbo charge your email communications. We write emails all day long. Sometimes an important email can take us a few tries and a lot of time before it can be sent out. ChatGPT can cut that time in half and give you great ideas that you never thought of. Here is how you can try it out using ChatGPT for the first time.
Step by Step Simple Instructions
Think of ChatGPT as a writing assistant you always wished you had. What’s even better is it’s free to use, available 24/7, never judges you, and will produce as many drafts as you need to get the email right. Also ChatGPT is something you can just chat with informally. The more specific your instructions are, the better it will be at helping you. You also don’t have to get it all right the first time. You interact with it. Your “prompt” which is the instruction you write to get a response can be imperfect. Once you get a response, you can write back more “prompts” to ask for a different draft. Let’s give it a try.
Step 1: Know your email objective: why you are writing this email and what you want the email to achieve and sound like.
Step 2: Open https://chat.openai.com. It’s free to use the ChatGPT 3.5 version. Work may block you from using this. If so, you will need to do this on your personal phone or laptop. You can also pay $20 a month to upgrade to ChatGPT 4.0. It has a bit better writing response and a ton of plugins for advance users to try.
Step 3: Once you get to this URL, go to the chat window at the bottom of the screen to enter your “prompt” – Use this format to type in your instructions: “Help me write an email that [insert your email objective here]. The content of the email should paraphrase these types of details [insert details you want here – it doesn’t have to be perfect. just stuff you know you need to include in the email]. I would like the tone to be [insert tone type – casual, professional, formal, etc..]. I want the length of the email to be no more than [x number] of words.
Step 4: Press the “arrow” sign to the right of the chat window and watch the magic happen. It should only take a few seconds for ChatGPT to generate an email draft for you based on the “prompt” instructions you provided.
Step 5: Read the draft email ChatGPT generated and if you don’t love it, put in the chat window, another “prompt” or instructions on how to edit. You can just use conversational English here. For example, “please change the first paragraph of this, it need to get to the point immediately and first ask for xyz, and then explain why I am asking. ”
Let’s Try It – A Prompt Example
I want to write my team a holiday email and I will ask ChatGPT to help me write it. Following the instruction above, I wrote this prompt in ChatGPT.
Help me write an email that write to my product team a nice holiday wrap up email. The content of the email should paraphrase these type of details – “thank you for everyone’s hard work and resilience this year. This has been a tough year and we pulled through together. Please take some time to enjoy the holidays with family and friends as well as relax and unwind”. I would like the tone of the email to be casual and familiar. I want the length of the email to be no more than 200 words.
Here is what ChatGPT drafted
Of course! Here’s a casual and familiar holiday wrap-up email for your product team:
Hey team,
Wow, what a rollercoaster of a year, huh? Just wanted to take a moment to send a big virtual hug and say a massive thank you. Your hard work, dedication, and resilience haven’t gone unnoticed. We faced our fair share of hurdles, but we tackled them head-on, together.
As the year winds down, I hope you all find time to kick back, indulge a little (or a lot), and enjoy those precious moments with family and friends. Everyone deserves a well-earned break!
Stay safe, and see you all refreshed in the New Year.
Cheers,
[Your Name]
Feel free to adjust as needed!
Where to Go From Here
If you don’t like the draft, then you can enter another set of instructions (aka prompt) to ask ChatGPT to try another draft. If you like the response, then I still recommend editing manually from here to add more personal color to make this email truly your own. ChatGPT is a tool to help you save time. It is NOT suppose to replace your voice altogether. Still do the work of tailoring your email once you have a good starting draft :-).
Also remember to NOT put any company confidential information into ChatGPT as it will be stored and be visible to OpenAI, the company that created the open source ChatGPT tool.
Go try it out and have fun with it! And who knows you may just find yourself more creative, more productive and in less time.
Your comments: Have you tried it? What do you think? I look forward to your comments and feedback
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Lei