Conceptually, these are pretty straight forward but it is surprising how many people do not sit down and tackle these areas before creating and executing upon campaigns.

Audience: to whom, or for whom, you are writing. Who is your target audience? We're not going to send the same email to the VP of Sales and the CIO because not only are they responsible for completely different things, but they likely think in very different ways. The same issues do not always apply to both parties. You need to zero in on your target in order to increase your opportunity for success.

Purpose: what do you hope to achieve? What is the action you want your reader to take? This needs to be a clearly definable and measurable thing. At the end of a campaign when someone asks you, "did this campaign work?" you need to be able to not only answer the question, but also to provide data as to how it did work, or how it did not work. "How do you know it worked?" "Well, the purpose was X and here is X achieved."

Message: what benefits you must convey. You need to decide what benefits are most important to your target audience that will make them want to fulfill your purpose. For example, the VP of marketing is your audience and your purpose is to get me to sign up for a free trial of your marketing solution. You solution is full of features, now what are the benefits? "How will your solution make my job easier for me? Oh, I'll be able to track email open rates, click-thrus and get one-click reporting on the lead sources of my company's closed-won opportunities? Yes, I want to see that! Sign me up for a trial!"

Don't let the simple, yet often time consuming marketing 101 basics slip through the cracks. It takes more time before launching a campaign, but your results should be much better and you'll waste far less time in the long run.