Research from Dotdigital’s Secret lives of marketers report found that prompt writing is one of the biggest reasons AI slows marketers down. 40% point to learning how to use the tools, and 38% to writing or iterating on prompts.
The good news is that prompting is a skill you can pick up fast. It’s less about finding a magic phrase and more about giving clear, specific direction, the same way you’d brief a new team member on a task.
This post covers the habits that make any agent prompt more reliable, then shows how they play out in two agents built into Dotdigital: Segment Agent and Content Agent.
An AI agent isn’t a mind reader. It only has two things to work with: the instructions built into it and whatever you type. If your prompt is vague, the agent has to guess what you mean, and a guess is only ever going to be a guess.
This matters more with AI agents than with a general chatbot. A chatbot will go along with almost any request. An agent usually has one job, like building a segment or drafting an email, and it works best when you ask for things specific to that task. Ask it to go outside that lane, and you’ll get a workaround at best, or nothing useful at worst.
A vague request forces the agent to fill in the gaps, and it won’t fill them in the way you would. “Find my best customers” means five different things depending on the day. “Contacts who’ve bought more than three times in the last 90 days” means one thing. Give the agent conditions, values, and dates it can act on, not ideas it has to interpret.
You don’t need the perfect prompt on the first try. Get one part right, check it, then add the next. Most agents are built for back-and-forth conversation, and a series of small, correct steps beats one long prompt trying to do everything at once.
If your data has a field called “Loyalty tier” or a list called “VIP customers,” say that, not “important customers.” Agents built to work in your marketing platform are designed to match what you type to your account data, but they can only match what’s there. The closer your wording is to your real fields, the less room there is for a wrong guess.
An agent can build something fast, but fast isn’t the same as correct. Read through the logic, the copy, or the rule it’s generated before you rely on it. Treat it like a first draft from a new team member: useful, but yours to sign off on.
If a result looks complicated or you’re not sure it did what you asked, ask the agent to summarize what it built or walk you through its reasoning. It takes ten seconds and catches a wrong assumption before it goes anywhere near production.
Dotdigital has two agents where these habits make a real difference. Segment Agent helps you build and edit audience segments, and Content Agent helps you draft and check email copy inside your email builder. Here’s what applying these habits looks like in each.
Segment Agent builds and edits segments from a plain-language request and can summarize the logic in a segment you already have. It’s designed to match field and list names to your account data even if your wording is a little off. For best results, be specific and build your segment gradually rather than describing a complex segment in one go.
Worth knowing: Segment Agent is a doer, not a brainstormer. It won’t suggest ideas or scan your data to surface new segments, and it won’t tell you how many contacts match until the segment runs. But bring it a clear idea, and it’ll bring it to life and build it fast.
Content Agent lives inside our email builder and helps with the copy itself: brainstorming angles, drafting a first version, tweaking tone or length, checking a draft before you send, adding personalization, and generating or editing images. Nothing it produces goes into your campaign until you’ve reviewed and approved it.
For the best results, set up your brand voice details in your Dotdigital account first. The more Content Agent knows about how your brand sounds, the less editing you’ll do later.
Treat AI agents like a new team member. Give them specific tasks, clear direction, and simple, step-by-step explanations, then check in before moving on.
Pick one prompt from this list and try it for yourself. These habits become second nature fast, and that’s how prompt writing goes from something that slows you down to something that helps you get through your to-do list faster.
