PoFint

Are you thinking there's no 'F' in point? You'd better hope that your audience doesn't think the same about your email. The goal of your campaigns is to build engagement and ultimately get a response, to sell. You can't start planning what to write until you know the point of why you're writing.

Getting to the point

Your emails should be written to sell. Even before you start selling your products or services, you're asking recipients to pay attention, to invest their time — that requires selling.

So what's the point of your email?

To tell people about what I offer and all its features and benefits

That's not a great approach. Telling people requires passive listening and isn't how online reading behaviour works at all. Oh, and people? Better to target a specific segment of your audience. So how about:

To persuade potential customers to buy what I offer by showing them its features and benefits

When a point isn't concise it's not a point, more of a lump. This lump isn't clear and not only has an aim, but suggests how it will be achieved. Don't limit your efforts by narrowly focusing on a features-benefits-persuasion approach. There's a subtle but enormous difference between an effective email that's written to sell and one that just lists features and benefits. Try:

To sell to a specific segment of potential customers

Concise, clear and focused. Pair each audience segment with a targeted message written to sell. Sounds good.

The point of this hair-splitting? It's obviFous…

Now you're probably thinking thanks for the 'F' in obvious. Why so pedantic, does it matter? Well, traditional email marketing has always been based on pushing newsletters to as broad an audience as possible. Generic, catch-all emails that have no real focus and come padded with plenty of pointless copy that doesn't help sell. It's why a lot of people that have used the mass market newsletter platforms have been disappointed with the results.