The only email automation you need is free, and it lives inside Gmail

Forget everything you have seen on Instagram and Facebook. The automation actually worth building is the boring one: something that reads incoming email and writes the reply for you, in your own words, so you open your inbox to drafts instead of a to-do list. It is completely free as long as you have a Google business account.

If you are a business owner, or you work in a business and you triage email all day, this is the one to build. Especially at 20 plus emails a day, and especially in a service business where you are answering the same six questions every week. I built the whole thing on video, and both prompts are in this post so you can paste them straight in.

It lives in Flows

Flows is an automation system set up right inside Gmail. Google ships a few suggested ones: a pre-meeting brief, labeling emails with action items, a daily summary of your unread mail. Worth exploring on your own time. What we are building is the auto drafter.

Three steps get built: a trigger when email arrives, an Ask Gemini step that writes the reply, and a Draft an email step that puts it in your drafts folder. Then one more step gets added at the end, and that one is the difference between a flow you keep and a flow you turn off after two days.

The part most people skip

Gemini can write an email. It cannot write your email, because it has never read one. So before touching Flows at all, go to Google Takeout and download every email you have ever sent.

Takeout is just all your Google data, packaged up for download. Deselect all, scroll down to Mail, select it, export once as a zip. It can take a while, so start it before you do anything else.

Then hand that file to Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. You need the desktop app for this. The file is going to be big and the browser version will not take the upload. I used Opus, though Sonnet would handle it fine.

The ask is not "write my emails". The ask is to read everything you have sent and build SOPs out of it: reference documents covering how you answer, what you charge, how you talk. My email address was new, so my sent folder was thin, and I pointed Claude at my website as well to pick up services and pricing. I also handed it a screenshot of the flow so it knew what it was writing for.

It came back with nine files, and with a warning I appreciated: the corpus is thinner than it looks. The dominant pattern it found in my own mail was my sign-off logic. I sign emails "Smiles,". Now the system knows that, which is most of what voice actually is.

Those nine files go into a Drive folder. One thing to check before you trust them: if you are in a customer service role, read through and make sure the SOPs cover the hard cases, particularly disgruntled customers. If the model never saw you handle one, it has nothing to copy.

Wiring the flow

In Flows, hit the plus, then choose a starter. There is a good list in there: when I get an email, on a schedule, when I am mentioned in a chat, when a Google Sheet changes, when a file is edited in a certain Drive. Pick "when I get an email" and set it to all emails. You can scope it much tighter later, and a client who sends you a PDF twice a week can be routed straight into a Drive folder without you ever seeing it.

Next step is Ask Gemini. The prompt that comes preloaded says "summarize the email thread in one to two sentences to help me understand what it's about and its actions, if any", which is a pretty lackluster automation. Replace the whole thing with this.

You are drafting an email reply for (name), (position) of (company), a (business type) in (location).

INCOMING EMAIL

Subject: [variable: email subject]

Body: [variable: email body]

INSTRUCTIONS

Read these reference docs in the linked Drive folder first:
1. 00-hard-rules.md (these rules override everything)
2. 00-voice-profile.md
3. The matching category doc in categories/ for this email's intent
4. The relevant service doc in services/ for any service mentioned

THREAD CONTEXT
The email body usually contains the full thread history below the latest message (quoted with "On <date>, X wrote:" or > prefixes). Read the entire conversation before drafting. Use the prior messages to understand what has already been discussed, what the client's name is, and what action is pending.

Then draft the reply, following these principles:

LENGTH: Match the length of the incoming email. Short conversational emails get short replies (1 to 3 sentences). Long detailed inquiries get structured replies.

ACT, DON'T PITCH: Most replies should propose a next step. Book a quote visit, share a ballpark range, ask for the address or photos. Do NOT paste service-template content unless the client explicitly asked for service details (questions like "what's included", "do you do X").

FORM SUBMISSIONS: Reference what they entered. Propose a next step. 2 to 4 sentences max.

PRICING: Never quote exact prices in writing. Use ranges only. Final quote happens in person or via photos.

DATES AND TIMES: Never confirm specific dates without checking the calendar (use phrasing like "I think Thursday works, let me confirm by end of day"). When the client specifies a time window ("late afternoon", "morning", "after 3pm"), echo their exact phrasing. Do not paraphrase.

PUNCTUATION: Never use em dashes, en dashes, or double hyphens. Use commas and periods.

SIGNOFF: ALWAYS use "Smiles," NEVER any other sign off.

Output ONLY the draft email body. No subject line, no preamble, no explanation, no markdown formatting.

Fill in the bracketed details at the top with your own. Where the prompt says variable, use the variable picker inside the step rather than typing it: one for email subject, one for email body.

Then set the sources. Gemini can draft from the web or from anything in your workspace, but you want it pointed somewhere very specific. Choose specific sources, choose Drive, find the folder where you put the SOPs, and insert all of them. Everything the draft knows comes from that folder.

Third step is Draft an email. To is the sender's address, subject is the subject, and the message is the variable from step two, the content created by Gemini.

Testing it

I sent myself an email asking about my stewardship program, what it costs generally, and how long it runs for. The draft came back explaining what stewardship is and how I approach it, and it closed by offering a free 30 minute call with my cal.com link attached. I did not tell it to do that. I sometimes forget to do that myself.

The step that stops it embarrassing you

Someone writes "sounds great, I'll see you Thursday". Without a gate, the flow cheerfully drafts "Great, I'll see you Thursday", and you are now the person who replies to replies.

So add one more step, a Decide step. Add it last, then move it up to position two so it runs before Gemini spends a draft. Same variables: sender, subject, email body.

Act as (Name)'s email triage assistant. Your sole task is to determine if this email needs a substantive reply from (Name), owner of (Business).

From: [variable: sender]
Subject: [variable: subject]
Content: [variable: email body]

Read the entire thread (the body usually contains the full history below the latest message, quoted with "On <date>, X wrote:" or > prefixes).

Return TRUE if the email needs a reply:
- A new inquiry, question, or quote request
- A scheduling decision pending from (Name)
- A complaint, issue, or problem to address
- A request for information not yet answered
- An action (Name) needs to take or confirm
- A QUOTE DECLINE or "we went with someone else" message
- A first-time interaction with a new contact (sender hasn't emailed (Name) before in this thread)

Return FALSE only if the email is clearly closing an EXISTING engagement that doesn't need acknowledgment:
- A simple "thanks!" or "got it" reply to something (Name) already sent
- A "see you then" or "sounds good" confirming an already-scheduled appointment
- An automated notification, newsletter, or system email
- An out-of-office auto-reply

When in doubt, return TRUE. It is much better to draft an unnecessary reply than to miss one that should have been sent.

I tested it on an Amazon return notification. Gemini returned false, on the grounds that it came from a notification-only address, and no draft was written. That is the behaviour you want, and it also catches most spam on the way through.

What I will not hand over

The calendar. You will notice the drafting prompt tells Gemini never to confirm a specific date without checking, and to hedge instead. You can absolutely wire this up to fill your calendar for you. I do not want that. I want a person sitting between the draft and the commitment.

Everything before the commitment is fair game, and the drafting is the part that actually gives time back. It gets the email mostly 95% of the way there. There is tweaking afterward, sure, but if you are saying the exact same thing to every client, you are now editing instead of writing.

The full build, click by click, is in the video. The prompts are above. Take them.

Smiles,
Brett