I’ll be honest. Most AI-generated emails are cringeworthy. While they’re well-structured and grammatically correct, they don’t feel like they were written for anyone in particular. More like they were pulled from the same endless drawer labeled “ChatGPT prompts that create great emails.”

Here’s the problem: If your email could be sent to anyone, then it won’t really matter to someone.

That’s why I want to talk about three things that turn flat AI copy into something that feels alive: customer personas, the author’s unique writing style, and company context. Each factor helps a little. When combined, however, they can make your campaigns feel personal, relevant, and human.

AI is powerful, yes. However, when left on its own, it defaults to being bland but correct, which is not what builds your relationships with your audience.

Why AI-generated emails often feel generic

We know that AI learns from a vast amount of data; billions of texts and examples. This is a trap, however.

AI can be given the prompt “write a newsletter about a new feature for my SaaS product’s subscribers,” but it doesn’t know your audience. AI doesn’t know their inside jokes, the struggles they face, or the tiny details that make your brand voice feel real. It just gives you an average, one-size-fits-all answer, and “average” is the last thing you want your subscribers to read.

You have likely seen the same vague AI-generated phrases, such as “Unlock your potential” and “Take it to the next level,” in your inbox. When you give AI shallow input without real context, information on subscriber segments, or the author’s writing style, you receive polished but hollow output. It’s like talking to a person who, despite their saying all the right words, you somehow… can’t connect to.

Ingredient one: Customer persona

Here’s where most marketers slip up: They expect AI to magically understand their subscribers and to get all their quirks, preferences, and struggles. But who knows your audience better than you? Unless you teach AI who your readers are, you will always receive generic output.

And here is a vital point: personalization is not just tokenization. Tokenization means using merge tags like $FirstName, $YearsWithUs, or $CompanyName. These add a bit of “human touch” to a mass email, but they don’t make it truly personalized.

Real personalization = Contact + Context + Value.

There is some important information you should know about your subscribers:

• Jobs: What is this person trying to achieve right now? (build a campaign before a holiday, learn how to work with a new tool);
• Pains: What slows them down or frustrates them? (no time for design, fear of making a technical mistake);
• Gains: What would make them feel successful or satisfied? (saving two hours, getting manager approval, feeling more confident).

Example:

• Tokenization: “Hi John, happy 3 years with us!”
• Jobs + Pains + Gains (personalization): “Hi John, I saw you’re working with advanced templates. To help you build faster (job) without struggling through code edits (pain), here’s a 3-step guide with ready-made blocks (gain).”

This is why your customer persona matters so much when you want AI to generate relevant and human copy. When you tell AI, “My readers are 35-year-old founders who binge podcasts at 1.5x speed and hate fluff,” you’re not just feeding it vague labels like “working mom” or “tech-savvy millennial.” You’re giving it context; what they care about, how they talk, and what instantly frustrates them.

And, importantly, they are live documents. As you gather new data and insights, you can update and refine them to stay accurate and relevant. Here’s how you can use AI to turn a list of email addresses into people with faces, needs, and voices:

• Collect raw data: Look for insights in surveys, CRM notes, support chats, or social media;
• Feed the data into AI: Ask one of the tools for creating personas to group behaviors, highlight motivations, and surface pain points;
• Shape the persona: Instead of including “target audience: small business owners” in your prompt, use something like: “Rose, 34, runs an online store, checks emails on mobile, values practical tips, and doesn’t read long newsletters.”

But besides defining your recipient, it’s also vital to specify the voice behind your newsletter: the author. With these elements put together, you clarify both sides of the genuine dialogue, the persona (who your message is intended for) and the author (who is speaking and in what manner).

The formula for your customer-centric communication:

Context = Persona + Author style + Company profile

BrandKit + Context + Prompt = personal email

• Persona defines the recipient’s expectations;
• Author style ensures the message feels both human and on-brand;
• Company profile provides factual context and background;
• Brand kit brings in visual identity and assets;
• Prompt activates the AI to generate the message.

The key idea is to define your persona, generate a unique author’s style, and use both in prompts. Thus, you will be able to create more personalized subject lines, provide offers resonating with your recipients’ real challenges, and generate CTAs speaking to actual motivations.

As a result, AI doesn’t replace a human touch but speeds up the process and helps you see patterns you might miss.

Ingredient two: Recognizable author’s style

Even when your copy is perfectly aligned with your customer persona, if delivered in a generic tone of voice, it can sound off to your recipients. Remember that your subscribers don’t just read your words; they hear a personality behind them. This personality is what makes communication human.

The author’s style includes several components:

• Tone of voice: The emotional coloring of your message (friendly, professional, witty, empathetic, formal, etc.). You can alter the tone depending on the campaign and subscriber segments, but it always stays within the general frame of your brand’s personality;
• Language and vocabulary: The choice of words, expressions, and complexity level;
• Sentence structure and rhythm: Short vs. long sentences, narrative flow, pace.

AI is quite capable of identifying both the author’s style and the persona’s style based on the examples you provide.

Here are a few tips on shaping a unique and recognizable author’s style:

• Collect samples of your past communication: Emails, blog posts, even social media. Make sure they are written by you and not generated;
• Ask AI to analyze them: Look for rhythm (short or long sentences?), vocabulary (simple or technical?), mood (warm, formal, playful?), and some signature elements (e.g., “Describes complex systems with human metaphors” or “Encourages the reader to co-think rather than just consume”);
• Extract rules: For example, “Use short, direct sentences,” “Ask questions to invite reflection,” “Avoid jargon.”

These rules can then be fed into AI as part of your prompt. I’ll provide you with an example of a prompt based on my own writing style:

“Write in the style of [Author’s Name]: Warm, reflective, and structurally clear. Begin with a personal or relatable observation and then develop a deep strategic insight using examples or frameworks. Balance an informal tone with technical credibility. Use analogies, ask rhetorical questions, and speak directly to the reader. End with either a conclusion or an invitation to contribute.”

The shift is immediate. You won’t receive generic and shallow copy but content that truly sounds like you.

Ingredient three: Company context

Your emails should stay on brand while still feeling human; otherwise, even the best persona and unique writing style might produce messages that feel inconsistent and get lost in crowded inboxes.

Your company context is the glue that keeps emails authentic. Include the following in your emails:

• Brand values, narratives, and mission: What does your company stand for? What problems do you solve?
• Products and services: What are you promoting? What are the key benefits or differentiators?
• Target markets and regions: Helps AI adjust references, examples, and formatting (e.g., for currencies and units);
• Unique voice markers: Jargon, preferred phrases, metaphors, or playful expressions that make up your brand’s signature voice.

Feeding this context into AI ensures that every email, even automated or multilingual, aligns with your identity and feels both human and on brand.

Practical workflow for marketers

So, how do you glue these three bricks -- customer persona, author’s writing style, and company context -- together to generate emails that resonate with your audience?

Step 1: Build and validate your personas

Personas won’t be static constantly; they evolve and change, just like your subscribers. Look for insights everywhere (surveys, CRM notes, support chats, social media) and feed this raw data into AI tools for persona creation. It will group behaviors, highlight motivations, and surface pain points.

Don’t forget to check your personas regularly as new data can reveal shifts in preferences, pain points, or habits. Create an entire library of prompts for different subscriber segments and authors’ styles so that you can always delegate this task without losing consistency.

Step 2: Document your authors’ writing styles

Collect past content samples written (and not generated) by certain authors from your team. Ask AI to analyze their writing styles and extract rules. Store these guidelines so that every new AI output keeps your unique voice and allows you to maintain a library of author styles for your team; this makes delegating email creation seamless.

Step 3: Provide company context

Share your brand values, products, services, and signature expressions or playful phrases to keep your emails recognizable and distinct from your competitors. This ensures that your AI prompts generate emails that feel authentically you and not just generically correct.

Step 4: Feed it all into AI prompts

Incorporate your persona, the author’s writing style, and company context into your prompt. Ask AI to generate copy, subject lines, or localized variations. You’ll receive drafts that are tailored to you, allowing you to eliminate guesswork and keep your content genuine and relevant.

Step 5: Post-edit for naturalness and brand alignment

AI is fast, but humans should post-edit copy and check phrasing, cultural references, and formatting. Adjust where needed; your final step ensures emails feel personal, polished, and on-brand. AI won’t replace human expertise, so treat it like an assistant that needs your guidance, constant reviews, and context.

Wrapping up

AI isn’t here to replace you; without your guidance and context, it produces generic, one-size-fits-all emails, and you don’t want your readers to associate your brand with average content. The good news is that an AI brew can work its magic when you mix three ingredients: customer personas (who you are writing for), the author’s unique writing style (the precise way that you speak to your readers), and company context (the values and narratives that make your brand stand out).

After feeding these three into AI, providing constant feedback, and refining the copy, your emails suddenly stop feeling like AI emails. They become your emails, resonant and personal, even at scale.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash