Reading time: about 11 minutes
A well-made seasonal email is one of the things that brings most footfall back to a local pharmacy, and AI writes it very well. The problem is not the writing: it is three things that are not about writing and that the model handles badly unless you settle them first. Who you may send it to (not every address you have), what cannot be promised (almost everything that sounds good in a commercial health email) and what data cannot be used to personalise it (health data, even though you have it). This case sorts out all three before a single line gets written.
Step by step
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Decide who you may send it to, before writing
Having an email address is not having permission to send advertising to it. Spanish e-commerce law requires, for commercial communications by email, that the person has requested or expressly authorised them. There is an exception for existing customers who gave you their address in that relationship, if you are telling them about products or services similar to the ones they already bought, and provided they were offered the chance to object. And every email must include a simple, free way to unsubscribe.
In practice, that means splitting your list: people who ticked "I want to hear about news", yes; people who gave their address only so you could tell them a special order had arrived, no; people who have ever unsubscribed, never. If your list does not distinguish those situations, the first job is to distinguish them, not to write the email.
This is not a legal footnote for the end: it decides how many people receive it, and emailing people who do not want it is the fastest way to have your emails land in everyone’s spam folder — including the people who did want them.
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Write the three prohibitions into the brief itself
What a model writes when you ask for "an attractive email about allergies" is what it has read in thousands of commercial health emails: promises, studies, urgency. Almost none of that can be used in a pharmacy’s email. So the prohibitions go inside the brief, not into a later review.
Write a seasonal email for the customers of a local pharmacy in Spain, about the arrival of spring and allergies. Goal: to get them to come into the pharmacy for advice. It is not a promotions email. MANDATORY rules: 1. Do not promise that any product prevents, cures or relieves anything. 2. Do not cite studies, percentages or "clinically proven". 3. Do not name any medicine or brand. 4. Do not use the reader’s health data ("as we know you suffer from…"). Speak in general terms: "if spring does not agree with you…". 5. No artificial urgency ("last days", "don’t miss out!"). Structure: subject line (max. 50 characters), 3 short paragraphs, a call to come in or phone the pharmacy’s number, and a final line to unsubscribe. Tone: warm, like the neighbourhood pharmacy it is.
Rule 4 is the one most people overlook. Personalising an email with what you know about someone’s health is not marketing: it is using health data for advertising, and it is also unsettling for the reader.
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Read it looking for whatever slipped in anyway
Even with the rules, the model tends to sneak one past. Not out of disobedience, but because the tone of a "health email" drags stock phrases with it. Do one read looking only for four things: promise verbs (protects, prevents, relieves, boosts), figures or studies, product names, and any sentence that assumes something about the reader.
If you find one, do not soften it yourself: ask it to rewrite that paragraph, telling it exactly which sentence broke which rule. That way you learn what slips through in your kind of email, and next time you put that rule higher up in the brief.
Look at the subject line too. Email filters penalise subject lines with capitals, exclamation marks and offer words; a calm, specific subject — "Spring is here: we can help" — reaches the inbox more often and gets opened more too.
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Test it on yourself before sending it to anyone
Send it to yourself, ideally to two different accounts (one from a big provider and the pharmacy’s own). Open it on a phone, which is where nearly everyone will read it. Check that it reads without zooming, that the phone number can be tapped, that the unsubscribe line works and that it has not gone to spam.
Read it as an older customer who knows nothing about your campaign would: do they understand what you are offering? do they know what to do? is there any sentence that might make them think you are diagnosing them? If the answer to the last question is yes, rewrite that sentence.
And look at the sender name. "Pharmacy" on its own could be anything; your pharmacy’s name and neighbourhood are recognisable.
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Send it only to people who may receive it, and measure what matters
Sending is done from an email tool that handles unsubscribes — nearly all of them do — never by putting a hundred addresses in the CC field. And it goes only to the group you decided on in step 1. If you are unsure whether someone should be on it, they are not.
What matters is not how many opened it, but how many came in or phoned mentioning it, and how many unsubscribed. A week later, write it down. If there were a lot of unsubscribes, the problem is not the text: it was sent to people who did not want it.
Keep the brief from step 2 with its rules. The summer email, the back-to-school one and the flu one are made by changing two lines, and the five rules never change.
A full example, and what is wrong with it
This is what a model wrote when asked for "an attractive email for my customers about spring allergies that gets them into the pharmacy", without the rules from step 2. It is shortened.
"Subject: ALLERGIES?? Last days to protect yourself!!
Hi, [name]. As we know you suffer from allergies every spring, we want to remind you that the pharmacy has everything you need to protect yourself.
Our latest-generation antihistamines and our clinically proven nasal spray reduce symptoms by up to 80 %. And if your symptoms are severe, ask us about corticosteroids.
This week only, 15 % off! Don’t miss out."
And now, what is wrong with that reply:
- It uses health data to personalise. "As we know you suffer from allergies every spring" can only be written if you have matched the email list against what that person buys or asks about at the pharmacy. That is using health data for advertising, and to the reader it says exactly what you do not want them to think: that their pharmacy is watching them.
- It promises and cites with no source. "Protect yourself", "reduce symptoms by up to 80 %", "clinically proven". They are health promises and a figure with no study behind it. In a pharmacy’s email, each of those phrases is a problem, and the figure is invented.
- It advertises medicines, discount included. Antihistamines, nasal spray, corticosteroids — some of them prescription-only — and 15 % off in the same email. Advertising medicines to the public is tightly regulated, and advertising prescription medicines is not allowed. The model either does not know or does not apply it: it just writes what sounds like a pharmacy email.
- The subject line is a spam magnet. Capitals, doubled punctuation and "last days". Even if everything else were fine, a large share of the emails would never reach the inbox, and there is no unsubscribe line anywhere.
Everything that makes that email "attractive" is what cannot go out: personalisation with health data, the promise, the figure, the discounted medicine and the urgency. It is not a bad model: it is what gets written in that genre, repeated fluently.
With the five rules from step 2, the same model wrote a calm email along the lines of "if spring does not agree with you, drop in and we will advise you", with the opening hours, the phone number and the unsubscribe line. Less eye-catching and perfectly sendable, which is the one condition that is not negotiable.