The longer it takes for the audience to understand the purpose of the message, the more likely they are to guess. This means the audience is not processing the information in the way you want or need them to. Worse than that, when the audience doesn’t know what to do with information, their brains don’t retain it as easily and may label it as unimportant. By clarifying your intent in the first few lines of your message, you give your audience the key to correctly interpreting and reacting to the information.
