Turn Your Old Emails Into Your Actual Brand Voice

Not “warm and friendly.” Your actual voice, the one that’s already sitting in your sent folder.

Before you start, take the names out

You are about to go into your sent folder and copy real emails you have written to parents. Those emails have names in them.

Delete the names before you paste anything. Swap them for [parent] and [child].

Your voice is in the sentences, not in the names. Nothing is lost by taking them out, and it means there is never a family’s details sitting in a chat window in the first place.

Same goes for anything else that identifies somebody. Addresses, medical notes, a birthday, a child’s age sitting next to their name. Take it out, paste the writing.

I use Claude, so that’s what I can show you. If you’re on ChatGPT the thinking is exactly the same and the buttons are somewhere else. I’m not going to pretend I know where, because I don’t use it.

Why “warm and friendly” doesn’t work

Most AI content sounds the same because everyone gives it the same vague instruction: “be warm and friendly.” That’s not a voice. That’s a mood board.

Your actual voice is more specific than that. And you already have proof of it. It’s sitting in your inbox right now, in every booking confirmation and reassuring reply you’ve ever sent a parent.

Here’s how to pull it out and hand it to Claude properly, so everything it writes for you afterwards sounds like you on a good day, not like a template with your name at the bottom.

Step 1: Find 3 to 5 real emails

Go into your sent folder and find messages that felt exactly like you when you wrote them. Not the rushed ones. The ones where you look back and think, yes, that’s me.

Good options:

• A booking confirmation you were pleased with
• A reassuring reply to a nervous parent
• A bit of good news you shared about a class or a child’s progress
• A message where you had to say something a bit awkward, and handled it well

You need real examples, not your best writing. The everyday ones are usually more honest than the ones you polished.

Names out before they go anywhere.

Step 2: Paste them into Claude and ask it to find the pattern

Open a new chat and paste in your 3 to 5 emails. Then ask Claude to describe the patterns it sees.

Here are some emails I've sent to parents. Look at my sentence length, the words I reach for, how I open and close a message, and where the warmth shows up. Describe my writing voice back to me.

Claude will come back with something specific. Maybe you write short sentences, maybe you always open with a question, maybe you never use a full corporate sign-off. That’s the bit that’s actually yours.

Step 3: Save it to Memory

First, check Memory is switched on. It is not on by default, and this step does nothing without it.

Go to Settings, then Memory, then turn on Generate memory from chats.

It’s there on the free plan as well as Pro and Max, so this costs you nothing.

Then, once you’re happy with what Claude has pulled out, ask it to hold on to it.

Please remember this as my writing voice for all future emails, captions and posts.

Now every new chat already knows how you write, and you’re not re-explaining it every time.

You can see everything it has saved at any point in Settings, then Memory. Worth a look, because almost nobody ever opens it.

Step 4: Test it

Ask Claude to draft something ordinary in your voice. A parent email, a caption, whatever you’d normally write that day. Read it back. Does it sound like you, or does it sound like a nice version of a stranger?

If it’s off, tell Claude exactly what’s wrong. “Too formal,” or “I’d never say it like that,” or “add a bit more warmth here.” It’ll adjust.

This gets sharper the more you use it. Not because Claude is guessing better, but because you’re correcting it in the moment, and that teaches it faster than any instruction upfront.

Why this matters

Once your actual voice is loaded in, everything changes. Social captions, parent emails, marketing, all of it starts sounding like you wrote it on a good day. Not a robot. Not a template. You, with the boring bit of typing it out taken off your plate.

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August 2026 edition. Anthropic move these settings from time to time, so I check them every quarter and update this page when they move.