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Create Stunning Emails with AI

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Overview

You don’t have to build an email by hand. Connect Claude or ChatGPT to Temway, describe the email you want in plain language, and the assistant builds it for you — assembling blocks, applying your branding, tweaking styles, and showing you a preview. You stay the art director; the assistant does the clicking.

This guide is a practical prompting playbook. It assumes you’ve already connected your assistant (a one-time setup), and it focuses on the part that matters: how to ask well. You’ll get copy-pasteable recipes for a newsletter, a hero layout, a polished promo, and an iteration loop — plus the patterns that separate a vague prompt from a great one.

Haven’t connected an assistant yet? The MCP documentation walks through getting an API key and connecting Claude Desktop, claude.ai, or ChatGPT in a few minutes. Come back here once you’re connected.

How to prompt for email

A weak prompt gets a generic result. A strong prompt gives the assistant four things:

  • Intent — what you’re building and who it’s for.
  • Content — the actual words, links, and images (not “put some text here”).
  • Constraints — length, tone, structure, things to avoid.
  • Brand reference — “use my branding” so colors, fonts, and logo flow in automatically.

Compare:

Make a newsletter.
Create a new email called "June Newsletter" for our outdoor gear shop.
Start from my branding. Add a headline "Trail season is open", a one-line
subheadline, and a brand-colored button labeled "Shop new arrivals" linking
to temway.com/shop. Below that, an image of our new gear, then three short
bullet points about it. End with our social block. Then show me a web preview.

The second prompt names the email, gives real copy and a real link, spells out the content block by block, anchors it to your branding, and ends with a preview request. That’s the shape of every great email prompt.

Emails stack top to bottom. An email is a single column of blocks, one after another — there are no side-by-side columns. For an image beside text, either stack them (image, then text below) or design that piece as a layout and drop it in. For several images in a row, ask for an image grid.

One change at a time. Once you have a base, ask for one refinement per message — “make the hero button larger”, then “shorten the bullets”, then “add a divider above the footer”. Stacking five edits in one message works, but smaller steps keep you in control and make it easy to spot what to undo.

Recipe 1 — A newsletter from scratch

You’re sending a monthly update. Open your assistant and paste:

Create a new email called "June Newsletter". Start from my branding and
apply the newsletter template. Then make these changes:

- Up top: headline "What we shipped in June", a two-line intro about
  product updates, and a button "Read the roundup" linking to temway.com/blog/june.
- Then an image of temway.com/images/june.png, followed by a short paragraph
  and a secondary text link "See all posts".
- A heading "Upcoming" and three bullet points about events.
- Our social block and footer at the bottom.

Set the email subject to "What's new in June" and the preheader to
"Three launches, one roundup". Then show me a web preview.

The assistant creates the draft, seeds it from your branding and the newsletter template, layers in your real content, sets the subject and preheader, and renders a preview. From here you iterate — you rarely start over.

When you don’t know the exact structure

Ask the assistant to propose one:

I want to send a welcome email to new signups. It should feel warm and short.
Suggest a structure, then build it from my branding. Show me a preview before
I decide.

The assistant will lay out a plan, build it, and render it. You keep or adjust — naming a template (welcome, promo, transactional) only when you want to steer it.

Recipe 2 — Make it look stunning

The structure is solid, but it looks flat. This is where you reach for styling prompts. Temway exposes a closed set of style presets — sm, md, lg, xl shadows, button shapes, gradient fills, dividers with end caps — and the assistant already knows them. You just describe the effect you want.

Add depth with shadows

Make the hero button feel more clickable: give it a large drop shadow,
round the corners more, and increase its vertical padding.
The two image cards look flat. Add a medium shadow and a subtle border
to both, and add a small shadow to the secondary button too.

Use color and gradients

Change the hero background to a gradient from our brand color to a darker
shade. Make the hero headline white and larger. Add a thin brand-colored
divider above the footer.
Give the "Upcoming" section a soft brand-colored background band and add
extra padding so it reads as its own zone.

Tighten typography

Make all section headings use our heading font, bold, and a bit larger.
Body copy stays as-is. Increase line height slightly on the intro paragraph
so it breathes.

Describe the effect, not the property. “Make it pop”, “give it depth”, “feel more premium” all work — the assistant maps them to the right shadow, spacing, and color settings. You don’t need to know the preset names.

Recipe 3 — A reusable hero layout

Emails are great for messages; layouts are where you design the eye-catching artwork — a hero banner, a feature section, a promo card — that you then drop into emails. Layouts give you a free-form canvas: absolutely-positioned text, images, buttons, shapes, and dividers, layered front-to-back.

You can ask the assistant to compose one. The strongest starting move is to apply a stunning starter template and refine from there.

Create a new layout called "Gradient Hero". Apply the gradient-hero template,
then customize it:

- Change the headline to "Build emails at the speed of thought".
- Swap the subheadline for "Design, preview, and ship in minutes."
- Change the button label to "Start free" linking to temway.com/signup.
- Recolor the gradient band to go from our brand color to a complementary
  purple. Keep the headline white.
- Add a couple of sparkle shapes in the corners for decoration — use the
  shape presets, tinted white at low opacity, behind the text.

The assistant applies the gradient-hero template, edits the text and link, retunes the gradient to your brand, and drops in sparkle presets from the shape library as subtle background decoration.

Layer artwork with shape presets

Temway ships a curated library of decorative SVG shapes the assistant can place without you writing any path data: blob, burst, ring, sparkle, halo, wave-top, wave-bottom, mountains, swoop, quote, and gradient variants. Ask for them by effect:

Add a soft halo shape behind the logo. Drop a wave divider at the bottom of
the hero so it transitions cleanly into the body. Put a small quote mark shape
next to the testimonial.
Make the hero feel more festive: scatter three sparkle shapes across the
background, low opacity, behind everything else.

Because elements are layered back-to-front in the order you add them, describe what sits behind first (“a soft gradient blob in the background”) and what sits on top last (“the headline, then the button”).

Publish the layout and use it

Publish this layout. Then create a new email called "Launch Announcement"
from this layout, add a short body paragraph and our footer below it, and
show me a preview.

The assistant publishes the layout (so it’s frozen and reusable), seeds a new email from it, appends your body content, and previews the result. Next time you need a launch email, you start from the same layout in one line.

Recipe 4 — Iterate on copy

First drafts are rarely final. Treat the conversation as an editing session — ask for a pass, review the preview, ask for the next pass.

The intro paragraph is too long. Cut it to two sentences and make the tone
more conversational, less corporate.
Give me three subject line options for this email, aimed at busy product
managers. Keep each under 50 characters.
The bullet points feel generic. Rewrite them to be more specific and
benefit-driven, and tighten each to one line.
This email is too long overall. Keep the hero and the CTA, but condense the
middle section into a single short paragraph. Remove the "Upcoming" section.

You can also ask for variants without committing:

Show me a more minimal version of this email — same hero and CTA, but drop
everything else. Don't save it yet; just preview it so I can compare.

Preview before you publish. Always end an editing session with “show me a web preview.” The web preview is fast and accurate. Before you send for real, ask for an HTML preview once to confirm how it lands in Gmail and Outlook.

Recipe 5 — Preview, publish, and test send

The closing workflow is the same every time:

Show me a web preview.
Looks good. Render the inbox HTML version so I can check it in Gmail and
Outlook before we send.
Publish the email.
Send a test to [email protected] so I can see it in my own inbox.
  • Web preview is your fast, everyday check.
  • HTML preview is the inbox-fidelity check — use it once before you send, since it runs a heavier render.
  • Publish stores the version people see in shared links and the gallery.
  • Test send drops the real email into an inbox you control. Temway enforces a per-plan daily limit on test sends and doesn’t replace your ESP for production sends — export or connect your provider for the real campaign.

Prompt patterns cheatsheet

Reach for these phrasings. Mix and match.

You want to…Try prompting…
Start fast”Create a new email from my branding using the newsletter template.”
Steer structure”Add an image, then three bullets below it — emails stack top to bottom.”
Add a CTA”Add a brand-colored button labeled ‘Get started’ linking to temway.com/signup, with a large shadow.”
Apply branding”Apply my brand fonts and colors across the whole email.”
Add depth”Give the cards a medium shadow and a subtle border.”
Use gradients”Make the hero background a gradient from our brand color to a darker shade.”
Decorate a layout”Add sparkle shape presets in the corners, low opacity, behind the text.”
Build a hero”Create a layout, apply the gradient-hero template, then change the headline to …”
Tighten copy”Shorten the intro to two sentences and make it more conversational.”
Get subject options”Give me three subject line options under 50 characters for busy founders.”
Compare variants”Show me a more minimal version — don’t save it, just preview so I can compare.”
Check before sending”Render the inbox HTML version so I can verify it in Gmail and Outlook.”
Ship it”Publish the email, then send a test to [email protected].”

Tips for better results

  • Be specific about content. Real headlines, real links, real image URLs. “Add a button” produces a placeholder; “add a button labeled ‘Shop now’ linking to temway.com/shop” produces your button.
  • Reference your brand. “Use my branding” or “start from my branding” pulls in your colors, fonts, and logo automatically. Set up your branding first and every prompt gets easier.
  • Name your audience and tone. “For busy engineers, confident and concise” steers copy more than “make it good.”
  • Ask for previews often. A web preview after each big change keeps you aligned. It’s fast — use it liberally.
  • Edit one thing at a time. Stacked edits work, but a single change per message is easier to review and undo.
  • Let it propose. When you’re stuck, ask the assistant to suggest a structure or three subject lines — then pick and refine.
  • Keep layouts for artwork, emails for messages. Design your hero banner or feature section once as a layout, publish it, then drop it into every email that needs it.

Next steps