Smart Compose

Where it came from

Google announced Smart Compose for Gmail on 8 May 2018, describing it as suggesting complete sentences as you type, from the greeting to the sign-off (Google's announcement). You keep typing, a grey suggestion appears, and Tab accepts it.

Finishing sentences vs drafting emails

Two different things get called smart compose:

• Sentence completion. It suggests the next few words while you write. You're still writing the email.
• Drafting. You give it a goal and a tone, and it writes the whole email. You're editing, not writing.

Completion saves keystrokes. Drafting saves you from the blank page, and it's where things go wrong more often.

Using AI drafts well in sales email

• Treat a draft as a starting point. Rewrite the opening line yourself; it's the part that shows you know who you're writing to.
• Check every fact. A draft that invents something about the recipient's company does more damage than no email.
• Use it most on follow-ups, where there's a thread to work from. On a first cold email the model has little to go on and writes the average email.

What Outsolvi has

Outsolvi doesn't finish your sentences. In the web app, scheduling a follow-up on a tracked email offers AI drafts in six tones: Friendly, Direct, Soft, Breakup, Curious and Brief. The draft is written from the original subject line, the recipient's name and how long ago you sent it. It fills the follow-up form and you edit it before scheduling. The Gmail extension and the Outlook add-ins don't write emails.