--- name: idp-customer-emails description: > Write customer-facing email copy for ID Partners automated campaigns in the voice of an established advisory firm - the register of BIAN, McKinsey or KuppingerCole, written the way a seasoned human copywriter would have written it. Targets specific executive and technical audiences: CEO, CIO, CISO, chief/enterprise architects, chief engineers. Use this skill whenever the user asks for a customer email, campaign email, nurture sequence, newsletter, webinar or event invite, announcement, regulatory alert, follow-up, or any outbound email copy in an ID Partners / IDP context - even if they don't mention tone, audience, or "campaign". If the output is an email a customer will read, use this skill. --- # ID Partners customer emails Emails that read like they came from a firm customers already respect - an analyst house or advisory practice with a point of view - not from a marketing platform. The copy is what earns that: one clear argument per email, evidence over adjectives, and a register matched precisely to who is reading it. These emails are sent through automation, but nothing about them should feel automated. The test for every draft: would a partner at the firm be comfortable having personally signed it? ## Workflow 1. **Establish the brief.** Four things, inferred from the request or asked for if genuinely missing: - **Audience**: which of the five personas (below) is this for? - **Email type**: insight/point-of-view, event invite, regulatory alert, announcement, or nurture follow-up. - **The one idea**: the single argument or fact this email exists to land. If the brief contains three ideas, that's three emails or one editorial decision - never one email carrying all three. - **The ask**: the one action the reader takes (book a briefing, register, reply, read the paper). 2. **Read `references/personas.md`** for the target audience before drafting - it defines what each persona cares about, what convinces them, their vocabulary, and what makes them delete an email. When one campaign targets several personas, write a separate variant per persona: same core idea, reframed - never one email stretched to serve a CEO and an engineer at once. 3. **Draft** to the voice rules and anatomy below. For calibration on what good looks like, read `references/examples.md` - four annotated, full-length emails across the personas. 4. **Self-check** against the checklist at the end before delivering. ## The house voice The register of a firm that publishes research and advises boards. Authoritative because it is specific, never because it says it is. - **Evidence beats adjectives.** Name the regulation, the standard, the date, the number. "CPS 230 came into force on 1 July 2025" does more work than any amount of "rapidly evolving regulatory landscape". If a sentence would survive in a competitor's email unchanged, it's too generic to send. - **Open with the reader's problem or a sharp observation.** Never with "I hope this email finds you well", never with who ID Partners is, never with "we're excited to". The first line decides whether the second gets read. - **Prose, not bullet walls.** Advisory firms write paragraphs. Bullets only for genuinely parallel items - an agenda, a set of dates - and rarely even then. - **Vary the rhythm.** Short sentences carry the point. Longer ones carry the reasoning. A paragraph of three same-length sentences reads machine-made. - **Confident, not salesy.** State the view and let it stand. No exclamation marks, no urgency theatre ("Don't miss out!"), no flattery of the reader. - **A person signs it.** A named individual with a title - never "The ID Partners Team". Peer-to-peer is the whole premise. - **Australian English throughout** (organisation, -ise, colour), per the idp-brand skill. **Never use** the vocabulary that marks copy as machine-written or marketing-brochure filler: *leverage* (as a verb), *delve*, *seamless*, *robust*, *holistic*, *cutting-edge*, *game-changing*, *unlock*, *empower*, *journey* (unless literal), *landscape* (as in "the X landscape"), "in today's...", "we're excited/thrilled to announce", "isn't just X - it's Y", stacked triples of adjectives, and emoji anywhere. If a phrase feels like it belongs on a conference banner, cut it. ## Email anatomy Deliver every email in this format, as markdown: ``` **Audience:** **Type:** **Subject:** <4-9 words, specific, sentence case> **Preview:** **CTA:** ``` - **Subject**: a specific claim or question, not a topic label. "Who answers when an AI agent moves money?" beats "Agentic AI and Trust Frameworks". No colons-plus-buzzword constructions, no title case, no emoji. - **Preview text**: written deliberately - it renders next to the subject in every inbox. Extend the thought; never "View this email in your browser". - **Body**: typically 120-220 words. CEOs at the short end, architects and engineers can carry more. Over 250 words, something should move to a linked paper or landing page. - **One CTA**, low-friction, phrased as the natural next step of the argument - not "Learn more". Links in prose ("the full note is here") or a single line at the end; never three buttons. - **Merge fields**: `{{FirstName}}` and `{{Company}}` only, and only where a human writing one-to-one would naturally use them. A greeting is enough; repeating the reader's company name mid-paragraph is a mail-merge tell. Note in the handover if the sending platform uses different syntax. - **Format**: these are text-first emails - analyst firms don't send picture brochures. If a branded HTML wrapper is explicitly requested, apply the idp-brand skill (logo, `#FC6401` accent, restrained) around the same copy. ## The five personas Full guidance in `references/personas.md`. In one line each: | Persona | The email must speak to | |---|---| | CEO | Commercial consequence and board accountability - never technology for its own sake | | CIO | Delivery, cost, and capability - will this simplify or complicate their estate | | CISO | Risk, assurance, and the regulator - evidence they can take to their board | | Chief / enterprise architect | Standards, patterns, interoperability - respect their depth | | Chief engineer | What it takes to build and run - implementation reality, not vision | ## Checklist before delivering 1. One idea, one audience, one CTA - and the persona variant actually differs in framing, not just in salutation. 2. First line earns the second: no throat-clearing, no self-introduction. 3. At least one specific: a named regulation, standard, date or number. 4. Nothing from the banned vocabulary; no emoji; no exclamation marks. 5. Subject is a claim or question in sentence case; preview extends it. 6. Body inside the word range for the persona; signed by a named person. 7. Australian English spelling throughout.