Day: September 11, 2024

Welcome to Trends, a weekly newsletter with the zestiest business trends and actionable insights for entrepreneurs.

Summary

• Great Margins: Newsletters are a simple yet profitable business (e.g., Ben Thompson’s Stratechery is estimated to gross between $6-7m.)
• Ads or Subs: Core newsletter business models include ad-supported (The Skimm, Morning Brew) and subscription-based (Stratechery, 2PM)
• Newsletter Media Firms Hitting 9-Figure Valuation: Notable media companies built through newsletter have hit multi-million dollar valuations. (The Athletic was acquired by the NYT for $550m.)
• Multiple Business Lines: Media firms that begin as a newsletter can extend into other offerings (e.g., premium research, e-commerce, community forums, networking tools, podcasts)
• Secret Sauce: Newsletters have a number of strengths vs. traditional media including a direct relationship with end users, higher engagement, and lean operating costs
• What’s Next: Opportunities include B2B content niches and tools that provide curation (bundling) or paywall services

Bob Pittman—the creator of MTV, former CEO of Six Flags, Time Warner, AOL, and Century 21 Real Estate, and now current CEO of iHeartMedia—has had a hell of a career.

With an incredible background in the media business, Pittman turned heads in 2003 when he launched Pilot Group. The new venture was an incubator and investment fund for a business that many people wouldn’t have expected a media tycoon to get involved in: newsletters.

Trends readers have long expressed an interest in the nuts and bolts behind the newsletter business. This report will give you a behind-the-scenes look at how it works.

And in doing so, we’ll answer why Pittman (along with thousands of other entrepreneurs) have flocked to this simple, but surprisingly profitable business model.

Table of Contents

• A Brief History of Newsletters and Profit
• Which Newsletter Business Model Should You Choose?
• 7 Reasons to Jump Into Newsletter Marketing
• 5 Challenges with Running Newsletters
• Newsletter Niche Opportunities
• Newsletter Examples to Learn From

A Brief History of Newsletters and Profit

In 1996, Microsoft released Internet Mail and News 1.0, a feature for its Internet Explorer browser. This was later renamed Outlook.

That same year, other companies like Hotmail started offering free email services that could be used anywhere. And email was born.

Since then, email has become embedded in our culture. (The number of email users topped 4 billion globally in 2023, according to the research firm The Radicati Group.)

In those early years, companies primarily used email as a way to send marketing material.

However, when Pittman entered the industry, he changed the perception of email. Specifically, he showed that email newsletters can be a standalone business.

Pittman & The Pilot Group

In December of 2003, Bob Pittman acquired DailyCandy, a trendy daily email for young women that featured tips on everything from restaurants and nightclubs to sample sales and beauty finds.

Pittman paid $3.5m for the business. At the time, DailyCandy consisted of 200k subscribers and a brilliant editor/founder named Danielle Levy.

The plan behind Pittman’s investment, say sources familiar with his strategy, was to help transform DailyCandy from a newsletter into a multimedia player that could extend its brand into magazines and books, stand-alone television shows, and perhaps even shopping or restaurant guides.

A screenshot of the DailyCandy website from 2008

Over the next 5 years, DailyCandy went all-in on email.

By 2009 the company grew to 2.5m subscribers and, according to Pittman, $25m in revenue with EBITDA of over $10m. That same year, Comcast acquired DailyCandy for $125m.

Following the acquisition, Pittman launched The Pilot Group, an incubator dedicated to launching DailyCandy for other verticals.

Pilot’s companies included Thrillist (now a $500m media company), PureWow ($25m in revenue before it was acquired for $40m), Business Insider (sold for $500m), and dozens more.

Most recently, individuals such as Ben Thompson (Stratechery) and Bill Bishop (Sinocism) have proven that single-person newsletter operations can generate 7-figures in annual revenue.

Furthermore, in recent years media companies built through newsletters have been generating healthy 8 figures in revenue:

• The Skimm: $30m
• Industry Dive: $29m
• Axios: $25m

A salient example of the growing trend in newsletters is the rise of Substack. The startup provides tools for writers to write, distribute, build community and monetize newsletters. Since 2017, Substack has raised a total of $90.2m from investors like Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz.

The platform boasts 17k paid writers, with the top 10 collectively generating $25m annually.

Which Newsletter Business Model Should You Choose?

Warren Buffet famously loved newspapers. They were predictable and profitable.

In their place, newsletters have stepped in, with all the upside (low cost, direct-to-consumer benefits, an opportunity to find many profitable niches) and little of the downside.

There are two primary business models in the newsletter business: ad-supported and subscription-based.

Ad-Supported (Examples: Morning Brew, The Skimm, Axios)

For ad-supported newsletters, the key metrics include:

• Subscribers
• Sends
• Cost per mille (CPM): Advertising rate based on 1k (subscribers or emails sent.)
• Open rate: percentage of emails opened by a unique subscriber.
• Cost per open (CPO): Advertising rate based on the number of unique opens.
• Cost per click (CPC): Advertising rate based on the number of clicks.
• Click through rate (CTR): Number of clicks advertisers receive on their ads per number of impressions

And key ad types include:

• Sponsored Ads: Basic advertising placement. (standard copy from advertiser or copy written in the voice of the newsletter)
• Advertorial: Advertisement that is formatted like an editorial. (Be cautious with this. Trust is easy to lose and hard to win back.)
• Takeover: An ad campaign that takes over a large segment (or entirety) of a newsletter.

The sample ad-based model below looks at the monthly revenue for a newsletter sent five days a week with the following assumptions:

• Number of Subscribers: 1m
• Open Rate: 22% (Avgerage open rate for a 5 sends/wk newsletter per Smart Insights.)
• Cost-per-open: $0.05 (Average CPO per research by Paved newsletter platform.)

Based on these assumptions, the monthly ad revenue for this fictional average newsletter is $11k per day or $220k per month (5 sends per week.)

Subscription-Based (Examples: Stratechery, The Athletic, 2PM)

Self-Published Model:

A DIY subscription-based newsletter typically works in the following manner:

• A writer or team of writers provides content related to a specific niche in exchange for a monthly or yearly (discounted) subscription fee.
• The writer will mail said content on a consistent schedule (e.g., every Monday and Thursday).
• To attract new subscribers, the team will make X% of content free and paywall the remaining content

Stratechery, written by Ben Thompson, is a tech and business strategy newsletter launched in 2013. Thompson provides one free weekly article and three additional pay-walled reports per week.

While Stratechery has not confirmed subscriber count in a number of years, Michael Simmons of Blockbuster Blueprint estimated it around 40k in late 2023. Simmons doesn’t offer a source, but in 2020 internet sleuths pinned Thompson's paying subscribers at a minimum of 25k, so 40k seems like a reasonable growth rate for 3 years.

As of now, subscription options stand at $150 annually or $15/mo. ($180 per year.)

If we can abuse statistics for a moment by ignoring factors like churn rate and subscriber retainment …ahem … based on this fairly rough guesstimate, Thompson brings in a gross profit somewhere between $6 - 7.2m per year.

Substack Subscription-Based (Examples: Petition, TrueHoop)

Another option for a subscription-based newsletter is Substack.

With the self-published model, every aspect of the business falls to the author or editorial team. To successfully operate a newsletter business, an entrepreneur needs to be familiar with a whole host of tools and processes—membership software, forums, payments, content delivery networks, hosting, etc.

Substack has created a platform that offers a turnkey solution for these back-end services for creators (thus, allowing them to focus on content creation):

• For newsletters with paid subscriptions, Substack takes a 10% cut of subscription revenue.
• With additional payments (e.g., transaction fees), the Substack revenue calculator shows an ~80% profit margin for creators.

For those wondering "when is it a good time to monetize", Substack has a great article based on the platform's data (Your Guide To Going Paid). The article is well worth reading but here are some notable bullet points:

• Start with a revenue target that feels right to you. Remember to adjust for income tax, as well as Substack’s and Stripe’s fees (10% + 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, respectively).
• Estimate your number of paying subscribers, based on the size of your free list. We commonly see conversion rates of 5–10%.
• Divide your revenue target by your number of paying subscribers to get to your annual price, then work backwards to a monthly price.
• We often see writers charge $5/month for newsletters in the personal interest category and $10/month for those in a business category, but challenge yourself to charge more than you think is possible. Set your price 20% higher than you normally would; you can always offer a 20% discount for your earliest subscribers.

Here are some methods that popular Substackers employ to draw more readers into subscriptions:

• 1:X ratio of free-to-paid posts: Judd Legum of Popular Information publishes four days a week, Monday through Thursday—one free post and three paid posts. The free posts act as a lead magnet.
• Weekly paid posts with free previews: Richard Rushfield of The Ankler writes an insiders’ newsletter about the entertainment industry. He publishes paid posts 1-2x/week with a free preview version. The preview acts as a teaser.
• Private member community: Nadia Bolz-Weber of The Corners publishes occasional free posts (1-2x/month), but only paying subscribers get access to the community— including behind-the-scenes Q&As, community discussion threads, quarterly book clubs, and guest posts.
• Exclusive bonus material: Flow State publishes recommendations for free music to work to every weekday. But they have to find it themselves. Paying subscribers get access to curated Spotify playlists.

And while Substack is the most well-known newsletter platform, it isn’t the only player. Beehiiv has become a new favorite among indie newsletter publishers. Another popular alternative “newsletter-as-a-service” tool is called Ghost. Instead of a transaction fee, Ghost charges a flat monthly rate that starts at as little as $9/mo.

And, of course, there are more traditional mass email-sending platforms that are adding increasingly more newsletter-style functionality. (Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Marketing Hub come to mind.)

Additional Considerations For DIY Subscription vs. Substack:

While Substack provides a turnkey solution, the platform has a number of notable limitations for those looking to rev up paid subscription businesses:

• The 10% fee is quite steep, especially when annual revenue gets into 7 figures.
• There are limited customization options.
• Newsletter websites typically have to use the _______.substack.com domain, which can stifle branding.
• Substack's current offering doesn’t allow for additional revenue products (e.g., ecommerce) and their referral program only allows you to gift subscriptions.

7 Reasons to Jump Into Newsletter Marketing

1. The Mass Adoption of Email is Still Growing.

Every few years someone declares email marketing dead. We not-so-humbly disagree.

As mentioned above, there are 4B email users worldwide, as compared to 3.5B social media users. And annual growth in email use is projected at a steady 2-3% over the next three years, bringing more end users into the email universe.

2. Newsletters Have Better Engagement Than Social Media.

In addition to the wide (and still growing) adoption of email, the channel has better engagement than the largest social networks:

• vs. Facebook: Organic reach on Facebook is under 10% while Constant Contact puts the average open rate for overall industry email at 32.55% as of the time of publishing.
• vs. Twitter: Click-through rates on tweets are less than 1% while email’s overall avg. click-to-open rate is 8.62% according to research from GetResponse.

Late last year, the entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant tweeted that “building a following on Twitter is building a castle out of sand.”

Large tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Google are famous for “changing algorithms” that can overturn the fortune of a media business overnight (see: Buzzfeed).

Because email is an open standard, when you build an audience via newsletters, you directly own the relationship with the reader and are not at the whim of an algorithm change.

With an owned audience there’s less of a reliance on paying platforms (to get “boosted” on social media news feeds) or trying to please Google (to rank high in searches).

While ad price inflation is finally showing signs of cooling, in 2023 the cost of online advertising rose 4.4% YoY.

The direct relationship with the end reader is also the perfect jumping point for building a broader community of like-minded people.

As Jenny Sowyrda, HubSpot’s manager of community strategy and operations puts it:

“If you aren’t building your community, your customers and prospects are already building one somewhere else.”

A newsletter allows you to steer that ship. And it becomes a virtuous cycle, as an engaged community can also generate newsletter subscriptions.

When you own a direct relationship with readers, you can offer additional products through the distribution channel:

• Stratechery offers a paid podcast
• Trapital offers early-stage investing opportunities
• Trends offers gated content like this (how meta 😉)

In a time when search engine and social media updates have marketers chewing their fingernails off, newsletters offer a predictable ROI.

And while iOS changes have made tracking email engagement more difficult, email itself is a well-established standard with steady conversion. It has not changed very much since its initial rise in the 90s. Moving forward, there will continue to be innovations in email clients (e.g., Superhuman, Hey), but the underlying standard is stable.

5 Challenges with Running Newsletters

The rise of increasingly stringent digital privacy laws (GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, CAN-SPAM in Canada) has forced companies to closely follow anti-spam rules including:

• User permissions
• Honest headlines
• Clear identification for ads
• Opt-out options and more.

2. It can be a very crowded space.

Every major publication has a number of newsletter offerings (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ). Further, with the rise of turnkey services like Substack, countless newsletters are being launched every day. The newsletter opportunity is as big as ever, but it’s very important to find the content gaps (more on that below).

As more written content goes behind a paywall (not to mention paid audio and video streaming services), there is concern that readers will develop subscription fatigue. In recognition of this issue, some Substack publications are bundling together their offerings so readers only have to make one purchase decision.

For subscription-based newsletters, the existence of paywalls means that the content is often hidden from search engine bots crawling the web. As a result, the content doesn’t show up in searches for relevant queries.

Another related challenge is that gated content has a harder time going viral, as people are less likely to share items that hit paywalls.

Newsletter Niche Opportunities

The opportunities involved in newslettering don’t just stop at running a newsletter yourself. We’ll start with those editorial opportunities, and jump off from there:

Content Gaps (Particularly B2B)

There are countless content niches that could use a dedicated newsletter.

The B2B space is particularly ripe for disruption and offers high revenue potential as industry insiders will pay top dollar for analytics and insights (aka the “corporate credit card effect”).

As Petition—the Substack bankruptcy newsletter—shows, there is great appetite to give traditionally dry, industry-specific trade publications a more approachable voice.

For inspiration, a Google search of popular trade publications shows dozens of opportunities in niche markets:

• AdWeek (advertising)
• Cranes Today (crane industry)
• Game Industry Report Magazine (gambling)
• Design News (designers)
• Engineering News-Record (construction)
• Architectural Record (architecture)
• Hairdressers Journal International (hairdressers)
• Global Custodian (custody and asset management)
• Coach & Bus Weekly (transportation)

Curation, Bundling & Discovery Tools

As noted by Ben Thompson, whenever an industry goes from scarcity to abundance, there is great value in services that facilitate discovery and curation.

For example, Letterlist allows you to browse and surface newsletters and then subscribe with a single click.

Similarly, Substack’s internal discovery tool ranks the top paid and free publications.

Paywall Services

One of the key decisions for any subscription business is to decide how much free content is made available.

• Freemium: Business Insider offers a lot of free content but also has a premium offering.
• Metered Paywall: The New York Times uses a metering policy whereby you can read X amount of articles before you hit a paywall.
• Hard Paywall: The Financial Times and The Information provide zero free content. You must subscribe to read.

Because of these varying strategies, there is an appetite for digital solutions that can register and subscribe readers as well as predict churn (or other related analytics) for paywalled content.

Piano is one such firm. But, based on the Trends team’s experience with the service, there is clearly an opportunity for a superior offering.

Newsletter Management

There are a ton of tools for newsletter senders, but what about newsletter readers?

Management tools are needed to handle the abundance of newsletter. There are a number of solutions that curate newsletter feeds (Feedly, Feedbin) and newsletter reading apps (Stoop, Slick).

Newsletter Examples to Learn From

Ad-Supported Examples

• Year Founded: 2000
• Key People: Dany Levy
• Theme: Pioneer daily email newsletter providing readers with hip and trendy events in their specific cities (started with NY and grew to dozens of other US cities).
• Notes: Sold in 2009 for $125m (was doing $25m EBITDA) to Comcast. Shut down in 2014.

• Year Founded: 2012
• Key People: Danielle Weisberg, Carly Zakin
• Theme: Daily newsletter (7m subscribers) summarizing news in an approachable manner and targeting young female millennial professionals
• Notes: The Skimm has raised ~$30m in venture capital, including from investors such as GV (Google Ventures), Shonda Rhimes, Tyra Banks, and Sara Blakely. Investopedia estimates revenue is $350k per send.

• Year Founded: 2012
• Key People: Sean Griffey, Ryan Willumson, Eli Dickinson
• Theme: Media offering that provides 38 B2B newsletters (e.g., Banking, Biopharma, CFO, CIO, Construction, Education, Transport). In addition to ads, the firm also runs marketing services and a brand studio to help corporates (e.g., IBM) with content marketing initiatives.
• Notes: Industry Dive was acquired by a PE firm in September 2019 for an undisclosed price. At the time, the firm was doing $22m in revenue, and acquisition estimates are in the $60-70m range.

• Year Founded: 2014
• Key People: Adam White
• Theme: A newsletter providing news and insights at the intersection of sports and business.
• Notes: In October of 2018, the company received an undisclosed investment from PE firm Stein’s. The firm has a number of additional offerings including video, podcast, webinars, and sports-related jobs listings.

• Year Founder: 2016
• Key People: Dan Primack, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz
• Theme: Media firm with 30+ newsletters covering business, tech and politics— plus podcasts and live events.
• Notes: Axios content is known for punchy, bullet-point summaries of the news. The entire media offering has an estimated revenue of $25-30m.

• Year Founder: 2015
• Key People: Alex Lieberman, Austin Rief
• Theme: Daily email newsletter covering the latest news from Wall St. to Silicon Valley.
• Notes: The Morning Brew has grown to offer 15 niche sub-brands, including Marketing Brew, CFO Brew, Healthcare Brew, and… you get the idea. More brews than your local taphouse.

Subscription-Based

7. Stratechery

• Year Founded: 2013
• Key People: Ben Thompson
• Theme: Leading tech strategy (hence name) newsletter that is considered a pioneer in the space of “individuals can make a living writing newsletters.”
• Price: $15/month or $150/year
• Notes: As noted above, a conservative estimate places the newsletter’s revenue at $6-7m a year.

• Year Founded: 2013
• Key People: Web Smith
• Theme: Daily newsletter that provides news and analysis on the intersection of business and media.
• Price: $20/month or $200/year
• Notes: A newsletter product that also offers data tools, networking opportunities, and curated expert insights.

9. The Information

• Year Founded: 2013
• Key People: Jessica Lessin
• Price: $599/year for the first year
• Theme: In-depth and exclusive tech stories read widely by the tech and investment community (~20k subscribers).
• Notes: The Information is known for breaking tech-related news stories, producing comprehensive tech company org charts, and cultivating an influential network of tech professionals.

10. Petition

• Year Founded: 2016
• Key People: Anonymous Team
• Theme: Bankruptcy and restructuring newsletter that provides insights in an imminently readable and snarky voice.
• Price: $79/month or $799/year
• Notes: Another 7-figure Substack publication with thousands of legal and finance professional subscribers.

Brand-Backed Examples

11. The Hustle

• Year Founded: 2015
• Key People: Sam Parr, Adam Ryan
• Theme: Daily business and technology newsletter written in a fun and irreverent voice.
• Notes: The Hustle was acquired by HubSpot in 2021 and has since grown to over 2m subscribers.

12. Trapital

• Year Founded: 2018
• Key People: Dan Runcie
• Theme: Business strategy analysis of the hip hop industry.
• Notes: A newsletter and podcast offering that provides the world’s best hip hop industry analysis. Trapital now only offers a free newsletter backed by their investment services.

13. The Athletic

• Year Founded: 2016
• Key People: Alex Mather, Adam Hansmann
• Theme: Sports media that covers professional and college sports teams across North America, with recently expanded international soccer coverage.
• Notes: The Athletic’s goal was to unbundle the sports section from newspapers. They were acquired by The New York Times for $550m in 2022.

User Experience & Intent Matching
Google's algorithms increasingly emphasize matching search intent. Focusing on content that answers specific user queries effectively, with concise, clear responses, improves rankings.
On-page user experience (UX), including site navigation, accessibility, and content structure, is critical to SEO performance.

Recruiters and HR professionals have a lot on their plate. From time-consuming customer screening to scheduling interviews and predicting success, they have much to keep track of — especially when hiring at scale.

But in 2024, professionals across industries are starting to take advantage of AI as a handy assistant.

As a writer and entrepreneur, I lean on AI tools every day to help lighten my workload. Recruiters can (and should) be taking advantage of AI recruiting software to help streamline their processes, too.

AI recruiting tools can’t replace a great recruiter or HR person, but they can certainly make recruiting easier.

I’ll be diving into the benefits and limitations of AI tools for recruitment and identifying some variables to assess before you select a tool. Then I’ll take a look at 12 industry-favorite AI recruiting tools.

Table of Contents

• Why use AI recruiting tools?
• How to Choose the Right AI Recruiting Software
• Best AI Recruiting Tools

Why use AI recruiting tools?

For recruiters and HR professionals, AI recruiting software can relieve a long list of the tasks that make up their to-do list. But AI can’t do everything. Here’s a look at the benefits — and limitations — of AI recruiting software.

Benefits

• Improved candidate matching. Recruiting tools can read hundreds of applications and find the ones that best meet your job description, sorting by skills and experience. Some experts have found that AI can cut down on the time spent screening candidates by up to 75%.
• Improving cost per hire (CPH). AI tools minimize the need for excessive job advertising. They also reduce the manpower necessary to hire by automating large parts of the process, driving down CPH.
• Reaching a wider talent pool. AI recruiting software can source talent from multiple platforms and siphon through more applications than a team member could on their own, allowing HR professionals and recruiters to consider a broader variety of talent.
• Filling positions faster. AI recruiting tools speed up the hiring process at multiple points. The screening and interview phase moves quicker with AI augmentation, and many AI tools automate various administrative tasks. In fact, AI tools may cut overall hiring time by nearly 90%.
• Improving candidate experience. AI recruiting tools personalize communication with candidates and provide information about the company and job. But most importantly, since AI tools lead to faster hiring times, candidates don’t need to wait nearly as long to hear whether or not they got the position.

Limitations

• Lack of personal touch. AI tools are limited in their ability to mirror humans. While they can personalize communications, messages generally won’t feel as human as they would if a person wrote them. Not to mention, these tools can’t use intuition to analyze resumes.
• Privacy concerns. Recruiting tools may collect, store, and analyze personal data, infringing on job applicants’ privacy rights.
• Bias. Recruiting software may be trained on biased information, which actually furthers bias, rather than improving it. In fact, Bloomberg reported AI may be worse than humans when it comes to race and gender bias.
• Waste of time for less frequent users. There’s a learning curve that comes with many of these tools, so if an organization is a one-time user looking to analyze a small set of applications, it may not be as much of a time-saver and so not worth the cost.
• Accuracy. Because AI technology lacks human judgment, there are times when the tool may not make accurate conclusions about best-fit candidates for a job placement. AI model error, as well as human error in building the model, contribute to questionable accuracy at times.

I spoke to Dan Kevin Roque, a senior recruiter from HRUCKUS, to hear his thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of using AI at work.

“Anything that requires human interaction and empathy like interviews, addressing candidate concerns, deciding on who to hire, etc. — are things I will not entrust to AI,” said Roque. “But the majority of the stuff recruiters do, including sourcing and writing job descriptions, can be improved with AI.”

Each recruiter may have different reservations and comfort levels with various AI use cases, so it’s important to research your tool well so it helps — and does not hurt — your preferred hiring process.

How to Choose the Right AI Recruiting Software

Augmented vs. Automated

Before you can decide the exact right software for you, you need to consider the two broad types of AI technology: augmented or automated.

Augmented AI technologies assist humans in completing their tasks. If you’re using AI recruiting software, augmented technology would assist you in recruitment analysis and increase your productivity — but it wouldn’t replace you.

I find that augmented technology is generally a bit more comfortable to use — especially for folks who aren’t used to relying on AI. I can audit my results rather than sending them off without looking, which helps build trust for the tools.

Automated technologies complete tasks fully without any human intervention. In the case of recruiting technology, an automated tool could send emails, source profiles, and screen resumes without any human interaction.

Automated tools are faster than augmented tools, but result in lower rates of accuracy — but depending on the task, that may be okay. If your inbox is piling up with interviews to schedule or resumes to peek at, it might be worth considering finding a fully automated tool to lighten your workload.

Roque shared his preference between augmented and automated technology, stating that he likes “a combination of both.”

“I don't believe AI would truly be able to completely replace human input any time soon,” Roque continued, “but AI automation helps with minor tasks that can take a chunk of a recruiter's time, and AI augmentation helps support human decision-making and actions.”

Other Considerations

Some other variables I consider when I’m assessing an AI tool are:

• Integration. Does the tool integrate well with your existing hiring process, or will it require a process overhaul?
• Accuracy. How well does the tool identify and evaluate candidates — and how well do you need it to?

(If you’re using it as an augmentation, you won’t need as high a level of accuracy as you would if it’s fully automated.)

• User interface. How easy is the tool to use and what’s the technological proficiency of the recruiting team using it?
• Customization. Can the solution be tailored to fit your organization’s exact needs?
• Support. Does the tool offer good customer support and resources for set-up, implementation, and troubleshooting?

The answers to these questions vary considerably based on the type of problem you’re tackling and the organization you’re working within. I generally prioritize user interface and accuracy when I’m assessing a tool.

Best AI Recruiting Tools

Now that you know the benefits and limitations of AI tools, as well as the type of tool you’re looking for, it’s time to find the right tool for your organization.

There are a lot of great recruiting tools on the market, so here’s a high-level list identifying the basics of the tool, what stood out to me about the software, and the pricing information.

1. iCIMS

iCIMS offers a broad range of capabilities and applications, from a career suite to job postings management to a CRM.

The software is extremely comprehensive, providing end-to-end assistance for recruiters and hiring teams.

There’s an analytics dashboard, applicant tracking, email and messaging capabilities, and a video suite that allows you to personalize and humanize your hiring process.

What I like: iCIMS is a long-standing vendor with a rich history of providing great tools to users. It’s easy to use and straight-forward, so it checks the box for teams who are a bit less tech savvy. I like its broad capabilities — it’s great for companies looking for a comprehensive tool.

Pricing: Custom

2. SeekOut

The SeekOut tool starts when you upload a job description. As talent applies, you can filter and sort results by things like skills, licenses, education, and diversity variables.

Once you’ve found the right candidates, you can take advantage of AI-powered engagement tools to create personalized outreach. The platform is also rich in analytics, with dashboards dedicated to helping you track your hiring goals.

What I like: SeekOut has exceptional filtering, so the tool relieves a lot of the work required to find the right candidates. I also like how the software emphasizes diversity in hiring, which shows up in multiple ways throughout their platform.

Pricing: Multi-tiered annual packages — discover price tag after demoing the software.

3. Paradox.ai

Paradox.ai offers a few different conversational tools, but their recruiting CRM lightens the administrative load for recruiters.

The AI tool can schedule interviews and respond to questions from candidates automatically. With an 82% decrease in time-to-hire and a 99% candidate satisfaction rating, Paradox.ai is clearly doing something right.

What I like: Everything about Paradox.ai is simple and candidate-centric. As much as I want a tool that’s easy for me to use, I also want to make sure it offers a great user experience to the end client or candidate. The Paradox.ai tool is really exceptional when it comes to creating a great candidate experience.

Pricing: Custom

4. Fetcher

Fetcher combines AI tools with recruiting experts to source great candidates for your organization. Use Fetcher to manage and create a pipeline with AI automation, then gather insights about candidate activity and demographics.

You can also integrate tools like your ATS, email, calendar, CRM, and Slack to further improve your team’s productivity.

What I like: I love how Fetcher uses in-house experts to screen your candidates in conjunction with the AI tool. That means you get all the benefits of AI automation with added accuracy from human supervision.

The other thing I like about this tool is that you can add specific diversity initiatives to the search, battling the biases that AI tools sometimes have.

Pricing: Custom

5. Textio

Textio helps you improve the quality of your job listings by giving you insights into tone and word choice.

For recruiters, this means it can also help you choose language that appeals to specific age groups and demographics. It also learns as you use it, so the more frequently you rely on it, the better the output becomes.

What I like: Most AI recruiting tools are about screening automation, but Textio helps you optimize the actual content of your job descriptions. It’s a unique tool that could fit well with other AI software.

Pricing: Tiered packages starting at $15k annually for teams of 1-199.

6. HireVue

HireVue is a tool for interviewing and assessing candidates.

It has a video interview feature, as well as a rich library of AI assessments that allow recruiters to evaluate candidates comprehensively — looking for potential in addition to experience.

It also automates recruitment communication, significantly speeding up the hiring process. Finally, the tool offers analytics, reports, and great customer support.

What I like: HireVue does an exceptional job of reducing bias because of the type of algorithm they use. The tool doesn’t “learn” through increased use, which means that every candidate is assessed equally as time passes. As I start leaning more and more on AI tools, it’s important to me that they’re ethical, and HireVue does a great job of ensuring that.

Pricing: Packages start at $35K.

7. Manatal

Manatal has a simple interface for sharing job posts and gathering a pipeline of qualified candidates.

The AI tool recommends candidates based on job requirements and helps you gather comprehensive information on the candidates from social media accounts.

What I like: Manatal pulls information from social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to paint a full picture of the candidates applying to your job description. This makes for a really thorough understanding of candidates that recruiters would otherwise have had to create themselves.

Pricing: Plans start at $15 per user/month. For enterprise companies, the price reaches $55 per user/month — which is affordable compared to other options. There is also custom pricing.

8. Humanly

Humanly is an automation platform for recruiters that value human interaction. It automates tasks that don’t need a human touch so recruiters can give more attention where it really counts.

The tool screens candidates and answers questions and then provides feedback for hiring teams. It’s great for companies that are hiring at scale who still want their candidates to have a personalized, positive experience.

What I like: Humanly is aptly named — it’s completely focused on a human-centric application of AI technology. The homepage of the site states that the tool is, “Loved by candidates and recruiting teams.”

I like AI tools that emphasize both the user and the customer and, for both parties to love the tool, they’re really doing something right.

Pricing: Custom

9. Arya

Arya is an AI-driven candidate sourcing tool that finds great candidates quickly and automatically. The tool screens, scores, and ranks candidates based on hundreds of attributes and seven multidimensional data points to predict the candidate’s likelihood of success in the role.

What I like: Arya’s focus is data and analytics. As a result, you get extremely strategic outcomes from the tool. If you’re recruiting at scale, this sort of specificity and accuracy is incredibly important. I think Arya is a great choice for teams hiring lots of candidates on a frequent basis.

Pricing: Custom

10. Skillate

Skillate provides candidate prescreening, automatic scheduling, job description feedback, and predictive analytics to gauge a candidate’s likelihood of taking the offer. It’s a really comprehensive tool for recruiters looking to take a data-driven approach to the entire hiring process.

What I like: Skillate provides in-depth analysis of your company’s hiring trends. You can see insights based on location, experience, education, past companies, and skills. Finding trends like these can significantly speed up the hiring process so it’s great for companies hiring often or at scale.

Pricing: Custom

11. TurboHire

TurboHire is an end-to-end tool that optimizes the entire recruitment process from candidate sourcing to final selection.

The AI recruitment software sources talent from across channels, screens candidates, and provides workflow management. Interviews are automatically scheduled and the tool integrates with any ATS.

What I like: TurboHire claims to reduce time to hire by 78% and cost to hire by 65% while improving the quality of the hire by 5x. It’s hard not to appreciate a tool that can offer such staggering results!

Pricing: Custom

12. Workable

Workable helps you source, interview, and communicate with candidates throughout the hiring process.

You can use the AI tools in the recruiting software to generate job descriptions and interview questions, as well as automate time-consuming tasks like interview scheduling.

Plus, Workable helps you manage signed-on employees at no extra cost.

What I like: With one-click, your job posting can land on 200+ sites. If you’re looking for a highly specialized candidate, or if you want your applications to come in from a diverse number of pools, Workable is a great option.

Pricing: Workable offers a 15-day free trial plan followed by a tiered pricing plan that starts at $189/month.

Finding the Right Tool

There’s clearly no shortage of AI recruiting software on the market — which means teams can be confident there’s a tool out there that’s a perfect fit for their organization.

I think recruiters and HR hiring teams should start by determining what they’d like streamlined before they dive into finding the exact right tool.

Some of these tools target communication, others target job description prep, and others are more focused on administrative automation. If you can clearly define what you’d like done, you’re going to have an easier time finding the right tool.

When I started applying SMART marketing objectives to organize my workflow and then for two teams of 20 people each, my entire perception of success changed.

As long as I didn‘t set clear goals with reasonable deadlines, I was bogged down in mountains of work, seeming to have no light at the end of the tunnel.

I was extra-achieving, but I didn’t feel it was enough, which led to wrong priorities and piling up tasks in a backlog.

Only after reading books on SMART goals did I realize how amazing clear objectives could be for soaring productivity in less time.

So in this article, I will explain the five dos and don’ts of making a SMART goal, complete with examples and hands-on experience.

In this article:

• What are SMART goals?
• SMART Goal Acronym
• Why are SMART goals important?
• Benefits of SMART Goals
• SMART Goal Examples
• How to Make a SMART Goal

What are SMART goals?

SMART goals are concrete targets that you aim to hit over a certain period.

These goals should be carefully drafted by a manager and their direct report to set them up for success. “SMART” is an acronym that describes the most important characteristics of each goal.

“SMART” stands for “specific,” “measurable,” “attainable,” “relevant,” and “time-bound.” Each SMART goal should have these five characteristics to ensure the goal can be reached and benefits the employee.

Find out what each characteristic means below and how to write a SMART goal that exemplifies them.

In the working world, the influence of SMART goals continues to grow. The reason why successful marketing teams always hit their numbers is that they also set and write SMART goals.

Research shows that 48% of people who set goals always write them down. It can help you get clear on what you want, stay focused, and track your progress.

Writing goals down turns vague ideas into concrete plans, and, of course, makes them easier to achieve.

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Use this template to follow along and create your own SMART goals.

SMART Goal Acronym

Most trace the SMART acronym back to a 1981 paper by George Doran, "There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management goals and objectives."

His colleagues Arthur Miller and James Cunningham are also credited for their work on this paper.

The “Objectives” section of this paper asks, “How do you write meaningful objectives?” Then goes on to define the SMART acronym as the following:

• Specific — target a specific area for improvement.
• Measurable — quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
• Assignable — specify who will do it.
• Realistic — state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
• Time-related — specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

The meaning of each letter in this acronym can shift based on the user and how they want to apply this framework to their business. You can see the most popular terms and their best-known alternatives below:

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The paper also states that not every goal needs to meet all five criteria. Instead, the goal was to use this acronym to create a benchmark for management excellence.

But today, the SMART acronym usually looks like this:

SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

This framework continues to be useful because it's easy to remember and can help streamline the goal-setting process.

I’ll now talk more about each part of the SMART acronym and how you can apply this as you create measurable goals for yourself and your team.

S — Specific

Specific goals are clear and include precise details. Specificity makes your goal easy to understand and carry out.

To check if your goal is specific, I recommend you ask more than one person to review your goal and rephrase what you are trying to do. If your proofreaders come up with more than one idea of your final goal, it isn't specific enough.

M — Measurable

Measurable goals are targets that you can calculate and track over time. Goals that include a set measurement or metric are more concrete than anecdotal goals or plans based on someone’s opinion.

Measurable goals give you and your team a chance to track progress toward a goal and make changes over time. It also gives you a clear and specific picture of success.

To figure out how to make your goal measurable, look closely at your ultimate goal. Ask yourself:

• How can we control this goal?
• Is this goal clear and actionable?
• Is there anything subjective about this goal?

Then, choose the metrics that most directly connect to your final goal. If you're not sure which metrics to choose, I think this is a useful guide to KPIs to help you get started.

A — Attainable

Attainable goals are challenging but achievable. This aspect of goal-setting should consider your team's unique qualities as well as the problems and blockers you work on together.

To set ambitious but attainable goals, start by thinking big. Create a list where you imagine the best possible outcomes.

Take a break for a day or two, then come back and edit your list with every question, challenge, and critique you can think of.

Goals that are too easy to meet won‘t motivate your team or lead to growth. But goals that are unrealistic can demoralize your team and strain resources. It’s important to find the right balance.

“Make your goal ambitious but achievable. Your goal should feel like a little bit of a stretch for you, so you stay motivated. If you set a goal that‘s too easy, you won’t feel inspired to do the work. On the other hand, the goal can't be impossible, or you will get frustrated.

To find the balance, take into account where you are today and what’s reasonable for you. Given the time and resources available to you, what is a goal that feels like a little bit of a stretch?” – Bernard Marr, CEO and Founder of Bernard Marr's Wine Cellar.

R — Relevant

Relevant goals support the mission, vision, and priorities of your business.

Start the goal and objective-setting process with a quick review to ensure that your SMART goals connect to your business goals.

I suggest reading through your company's mission and vision statements, or print and post them on the wall in a shared space. Then review quarterly business reports, recent memos, or any recent communication about business goals.

This will mean you start the process with what's relevant at the top of your mind.

After you draft your SMART goals, do another quick scan of these documents and review your goals for relevance.

It‘s easy to get excited about a new idea, even if it doesn’t align with company priorities. But the best ideas will support your most essential business goals.

T — Time-Bound

Time-bound goals have a specific deadline or timeframe. In my experience, without deadlines, assignments are uncompleted, and processes stagnate.

Human nature always seeks comfort and procrastination. Deadlines hold us accountable and pinpoint the lack of resources, knowledge, or other hurdles in a timely manner.

Also, adding a time constraint to your goal creates a sense of urgency.

Urgency combines importance with a need for action. This is sometimes because there‘s a fear of consequences. Other times employees feel it because they’re eager to prepare for the future or meet an exciting goal.

Time constraints are important to your goal-setting process. Tasks that are time-sensitive often feel more important than tasks without a timeframe attached.

This means that, no matter how essential a project is, it will drop in priority without a deadline.

Luckily, it's easy to create a feeling of urgency. Just add a realistic timeframe to your goal. I find that time-bound goals also set clear expectations for stakeholders, which improves communication.

Why are SMART goals important?

SMART goals are important to set as they:

• Help you work with clear intentions, not broad or vague goals.
• Provide a method to gauge your success by setting benchmarks to meet.
• Give sensible objectives that are realistic and achievable.
• Cut out unnecessary or irrelevant work that could take away from what’s important.
• Set a clear beginning and end to adhere to in reaching your goals.

When you set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals, you increase your odds of success by verifying that the goal is achievable, identifying the metrics that define success, and creating a roadmap to reach those metrics.

If your goals are abstract, if you don‘t know what it will take to achieve success, or if you don’t give yourself a deadline to complete steps, you may lose focus and fall short of what you want to accomplish.

Do SMART goals actually work?

In short — yes, if done correctly.

I polled roughly 300 participants in the U.S. and found that 52% believe SMART goals help them achieve their goals more often than if they didn't use a SMART framework.

Setting unrealistic goals and trying to measure them without consideration of previous performance, overly short time frames, or including too many variables will lead you off course.

My experience shows how it works (and fails) in practice.

Prior to starting work with the District #1 Charitable Foundation, I drafted a consultant proposal that outlined services by priority, timeframe, and OKRs.

The purpose was to find and attract new donors for livelihood and development projects for people affected by the war in Ukraine.

Having extensive experience in cold and outbound sales for tech startups, I considered it possible to engage 15 new partners in the conversation in under three months from the database I'd built.

I misjudged the resources needed and the time required to build genuine relationships. As a result, I couldn’t finish all the work within the planned hours.

However, I did manage to establish connections with seven new partners, sign one contract, and attain several memorandums.

That said, I fell short of the desired 15 meetings but succeeded in building long-lasting partnerships.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well, even if your SMART goal doesn’t work out to the fullest, it will bring other positive outcomes or at least valuable lessons for the future. If you encounter failure, don’t give up on this approach just because of one setback.

And here’s how I set realistic goals.

First, I start from the top down, where I state my final and biggest goal. Then, I break down the process to achieve the goal through subsequent steps and tasks. Once I get to the bottom and my first task, I run it through the SMART methodology. Taking that, I do the following:

• I rely on my past experience and lessons learned.
• I estimate the time spent on a specific action item and record the actual time spent on a task.
• If I have no relevant experience, I try to find benchmarks and speak to colleagues.
• If there's no data on the web, I rely on the first two steps and my gut feeling and make tweaks on the go.
• I also try to lay out roadblocks that might appear during the task and the time or resources it will take to resolve.

Let’s now discuss the data-backed benefits of SMART goals.

Benefits of SMART Goals

Offer Focus and Clarity

The process of goal completion is often more complicated than it seems. Distractions, side tasks, and other projects can all steer you away from completing your projects.

But SMART goals improve focus because they simplify the to-do list and offer an immediate reminder of why those specific tasks are important.

Boost Motivation

It's not unusual to experience stress or be overwhelmed in the workplace. One contributor is often a lack of clear goals. And that combination can make a serious impact on your motivation.

But a SMART goal can boost energy, improve direction, and motivate you and your team because:

• It gets everyone more involved in the process.
• It helps employees understand why their work is important.
• It offers a new challenge and direction for people who are feeling stuck.

But, even with SMART goals, motivation levels can drop — sometimes really low. And it’s completely normal. We’re only humans after all. 🙂

Blending freelance writing with part-time work at a charitable fund can be draining. When this happens, here’s how I handle it — I focus on what I enjoy, excel at, and learn from.

When I feel overwhelmed, I pause to remind myself why I do it and what I gain. If I stepped back, would I pivot? The answer is no.

Motivation drives me, so I rely on precise goal setting and tracking to reach new heights, improve the quality of my work, and open more doors.

Improve Accountability

Fear of failure often stops people from doing their best work. To avoid this stressor, you might avoid making a commitment in the workplace.

But accountability is essential for high-growth teams. It helps you and your team engage, take ownership of your work, and take responsibility for progress.

In my experience, SMART goals improve accountability because they give teams and managers a simple way to track progress toward shared objectives.

This makes it easier for teams to understand the learning, coaching, and feedback they need to optimize performance.

According to Persuasion Nation research, people who submit weekly accountability reports tend to achieve 40% more than those who don’t.

Committing to your goals with these reports can really boost your chances of success. Weekly reports help you build a routine and reflect on your progress.

That’s how you get a clear view of what’s working and where you might need to adjust.

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Strengthen Communication

According to 2023 data from Project.co, 68% of businesspeople have wasted time due to communication issues.

And only 7% of businesses rate their communication as “excellent.”

Clearly, effective communication is both difficult and essential to any business.

SMART goals help with effective communication. This is because they're goals that multiple coworkers, teams, and departments can quickly understand. This improves knowledge-sharing, collaborative efforts, and communication.

Help Manage Resources

Proper resource management can reduce costs, make processes more efficient, and increase productivity. But managing resources is tough.

Put simply, a business is a group of people, each with distinct knowledge and experience, working toward individual goals.

These individual goals eventually come together to meet common goals, but in the process, things can get a little wonky.

But SMART goals are great for resource management. This is because they offer a structure that makes it easier for teams to see where a process is creating blocks or challenges.

I’ve found this helps teams understand when priorities and resources are out of sync. It also creates a shared purpose that can inspire people to make necessary but difficult changes.

Increase Innovation

Innovation is a process that combines creativity and problem-solving skills to get original ideas. You may have heard the common belief that creativity requires a lack of boundaries.

And some critiques of SMART goals say that they can have negative impacts if goal-setting is too rigid or narrowly defined.

But there's extensive data, including this research from Harvard Business Review, that says constraints often positively impact innovation. SMART goals boost innovation because they create motivational challenges.

The motivation comes in part from the constraints teams need to work within.

Planning to create goals for the week, month, quarter, or year? Use this template to simplify the process of setting, calculating, and evaluating your SMART goals.

Enhance Performance

For managers, SMART goals offer a useful framework for improving employee performance. They make progress toward project goals clear.

This goal-setting framework can also apply to long-term personal goals for each member of your team.

For individuals, SMART goals can make it easier to balance and track work projects. I’ve found they can boost performance because they help you:

• Measure progress.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses.
• Build positive momentum.

Setting and working toward SMART goals can also help you develop new behaviors that can improve performance.

So now, it’s time to examine some realistic examples of SMART goals to better understand them.

1. Blog Traffic Goal

• Specific I want to boost our blog's traffic by increasing our weekly publishing frequency from five to eight times a week. Our two bloggers will increase their workload from writing two posts a week to three posts a week, and our editor will increase her workload from writing one post a week to two posts a week.
• Measurable: Our goal is an 8% increase in traffic.
• Attainable: Our blog traffic increased by 5% last month when we increased our weekly publishing frequency from three to five times a week.
• Relevant: By increasing blog traffic, we'll boost brand awareness and generate more leads, giving sales more opportunities to close.
• Time-Bound: End of this month.
• SMART Goal: By increasing our weekly publishing frequency from five posts to eight posts, our blog will see an 8% lift in traffic by the end of this month.

2. Facebook Video Views Goal

• Specific: I want to boost our average views per native video by cutting our video content mix from eight topics to our five most popular topics.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 25% increase in views.
• Attainable: When we cut down our video content mix on Facebook from 10 topics to our eight most popular topics, our average views per native video increased by 20%.
• Relevant: By increasing the average views per native video on Facebook, we'll boost our social media following and brand awareness, reaching more potential customers with our video content.
• Time-Bound: In six months.
• SMART Goal: In six months, we'll see a 25% increase in average video views per native video on Facebook by cutting our video content mix from eight topics to our five most popular topics.

3. Email Subscription Goal

• Specific: I want to boost the number of email blog subscribers by increasing our Facebook advertising budget on blog posts that historically acquire the most email subscribers.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 50% increase in subscribers.
• Attainable: Since we started using this tactic three months ago, our email blog subscriptions have increased by 40%.
• Relevant: By increasing the number of email blog subscribers, our blog will drive more traffic, boost brand awareness, and drive more leads to our sales team.
• Time-Bound: In three months.
• SMART Goal: In three months, we'll see a 50% increase in the number of email blog subscribers by increasing our Facebook advertising budget on posts that historically acquire the most blog subscribers.

4. Webinar Sign-Up Goal

• Specific: I want to increase the number of sign-ups for our Facebook Messenger webinar by promoting it through social, email, our blog, and Facebook Messenger.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 15% increase in sign-ups.
• Attainable: Our last Facebook Messenger webinar saw a 10% increase in sign-ups when we only promoted it through social, email, and our blog.
• Relevant: When our webinars generate more leads, sales have more opportunities to close.
• Time-Bound: By June 1, the day of the webinar.
• SMART Goal: By June 1, the day of our webinar, we'll see a 15% increase in sign-ups by promoting it through social, email, our blog, and Facebook Messenger.

5. Landing Page Performance Goal

• Specific: I want our landing pages to generate more leads by switching from a one-column form to a two-column form.
• Measurable: My goal is a 30% increase in lead generation.
• Attainable: When we A/B tested our traditional one-column form versus a two-column form on our highest-traffic landing pages, we discovered that two-column forms convert 27% better than our traditional one-column forms, at a 99% significance level.
• Relevant: If we generate more content leads, sales can close more customers.
• Time-Bound: One year from now.
• SMART Goal: One year from now, our landing pages will generate 30% more leads by switching their forms from one column to two columns.

6. Link-Building Strategy Goal

• Specific: I want to increase our website's organic traffic by developing a link-building strategy that gets other publishers to link to our website. This increases our ranking in search engine results, allowing us to generate more organic traffic.
• Measurable: Our goal is 40 backlinks to our company homepage.
• Attainable: According to our SEO analysis tool, there are currently 500 low-quality links directing to our homepage from elsewhere on the internet. Given the number of partnerships we currently have with other businesses, and that we generate 10 new inbound links per month without any outreach on our part, an additional 40 inbound links from a single link-building campaign is a significant but feasible target.
• Relevant: Organic traffic is our top source of new leads, and backlinks are one of the biggest ranking factors on search engines like Google. If we build links from high-quality publications, our organic ranking increases, boosting our traffic and leads as a result.
• Time-Bound: Four months from now.
• SMART Goal: Over the next four months, I will build 40 additional backlinks that direct to www.ourcompany.com. To do so, I will collaborate with Ellie and Andrew from our PR department to connect with publishers and develop an effective outreach strategy.

7. Reducing Churn Rate Goal

• Specific: I want to reduce customer churn by 5% for my company because every customer loss is a reflection of our service’s quality and perception.
• Measurable: Contact 30 at-risk customers per week and provide customer support daily for five new customers during their onboarding process.
• Attainable: Our product offering has just improved and we have the means to invest more into our customer support team, and could potentially have five at-risk customers upscale monthly.
• Relevant: We can set up a customer knowledge base to track customers’ progression in the buyer’s journey and prevent churn by contacting them before they lose interest.
• Time-Bound: In 24 weeks.

• SMART Goal: In 24 weeks, I will reduce the churn rate by 5% for my company. To do so, we will contact 30 at-risk customers per week and provide/invest in customer support to assist five new customers during onboarding daily and track their progress through a customer knowledge base.

8. Brand Affinity Goal

• Specific: I want to increase our podcast listener count as we are trying to establish ourselves as thought leaders in our market.
• Measurable: A 40% increase in listeners is our goal.
• Attainable: We can increase our current budget and level our podcaster’s cadence to have the means to hold insightful conversations for our listeners to tune into.
• Relevant: We created a podcast and have dedicated a team to source interesting guests, sound mixing, and eye-catching thumbnails to get it started.
• Time-Bound: In four months.
• SMART Goal: In four months, we'll see a 40% increase in average listener count in Apple Podcasts by providing our team the budget and cadence to make insightful podcasts with quality sound mixing and eye-catching thumbnails.

9. Podcast Listener Count Goal

• Specific: I want to boost our podcast's listener count by promoting our podcast across social channels. We will post four quotes related to new podcast episodes throughout the month on our X account, and we will post six short videos of our podcast conversations with guests on our Instagram account throughout the month.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 20% increase in podcast listeners.
• Attainable: Our podcast listener count increased by 5% last month when we published two short videos of our podcast conversation on Instagram.
• Relevant: By increasing podcast listener count, we'll boost brand awareness and generate more leads, giving sales more opportunities to close.
• Time-Bound: End of this month.
• SMART Goal: At the end of this month, our podcast will see a 20% increase in listeners by increasing our promotions from two Instagram posts to four X posts and six Instagram posts. So, if we achieve these numbers, we can say that we have met our SMART social media goals.

10. In-Person Event Attendee Goal

• Specific: I want to boost attendance at our upcoming in-person event by 50% by sending out three email reminders to our subscriber lists each week before the event.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 50% increase in attendees.
• Attainable: Our attendee number increased by 20% last year when we sent out one email reminder to our subscriber lists.
• Relevant: By increasing attendee count, we'll increase brand loyalty by providing value to our existing customers and generate more leads.
• Time-Bound: August 30.
• SMART Goal: By the time of our event on August 30th, our attendee number will increase by 50% from where it's at now (250 attendees), by sending out three email reminders to our subscriber lists.

Now that you’ve seen examples of SMART goals, let’s dive into how to make your own.

1. Use specific wording.

When writing SMART goals, keep in mind that they are “specific” in that there‘s a hard and fast destination the employee is trying to reach.

"Get better at my job" isn’t a SMART goal because it isn't specific.

Instead, I suggest you ask yourself: What are you getting better at? How much better do you want to get?

If you're a marketing professional, your job probably revolves around key performance indicators (KPIs). Therefore, you might choose a particular KPI or metric that you want to improve on — like visitors, leads, or customers.

You should also identify the team members working toward this goal, the resources they have, and their plan of action.

In practice, a specific SMART goal might say, “Clifford and Braden will increase the blog's traffic from email...” You know exactly who‘s involved and what you’re trying to improve on.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: Vagueness

While you may need to keep some goals more open-ended, you should avoid vagueness that could confuse your team later on.

For example, instead of saying, “Clifford will boost email marketing experiences,” say “Clifford will boost email marketing click rates by 10%.”

2. Include measurable goals.

SMART goals should be “measurable” in that you can track and quantify the goal‘s progress. "Increase the blog’s traffic from email," by itself, isn‘t a SMART goal because you can’t measure the increase.

Instead, ask yourself: How much email marketing traffic should you strive for?

In my experience, if you want to gauge your team's progress, you need to quantify your goals, like achieving an X-percentage increase in visitors, leads, or customers.

Let‘s build on the SMART goal we stated above. Now, our measurable SMART goal might say, "Clifford and Braden will increase the blog’s traffic from email by 25% more sessions per month... " You know what you're increasing, and by how much.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: No KPIs

This is in the same vein as avoiding vagueness. While you might need qualitative or open-ended evidence to prove your success, you should still come up with a quantifiable KPI.

For example, instead of saying, “Customer service will improve customer happiness,” say, “We want the average call satisfaction score from customers to be a seven out of ten or higher.”

3. Aim for realistically attainable goals.

An “attainable” SMART goal considers the employee's ability to achieve it. Make sure that the X-percentage increase is rooted in reality.

If your blog traffic increased by 5% last month, try to increase it by 8-10% this month, rather than a lofty 25%.

I think it‘s crucial to base your goals on your own analytics, not industry benchmarks, or else you might bite off more than you can chew.

So, let’s add some “attainability” to the SMART goal we created earlier in this blog post: “Clifford and Braden will increase the blog's traffic from email by 8-10% more sessions per month... ” This way, you're not setting yourself up to fail.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: Unattainable Goals

Yes. You should always aim to improve. But reaching for completely unattainable goals may knock you off course and make it harder to track progress.

Rather than saying, “We want to make 10,000% of what we made in 2022,” consider something more attainable, like, “We want to increase sales by 150% this year,” or “We have a quarterly goal to reach a 20% year-over-year sales increase.”

4. Pick relevant goals that relate to your business.

SMART goals that are “relevant” relate to your company‘s overall business goals and account for current trends in your industry.

For instance, will growing your traffic from email lead to more revenue?

And, is it actually possible for you to significantly boost your blog’s email traffic, given your current email marketing campaigns?

If you're aware of these factors, you’re more likely to set goals that benefit your company — not just you or your department.

So, what does that do to our SMART goal? It might encourage you to adjust the metric you‘re using to track the goal’s progress.

For example, maybe your business has historically relied on organic traffic to generate leads and revenue, and research suggests you can generate more qualified leads this way.

Our SMART goal might instead say, “Clifford and Braden will increase the blog's organic traffic by 8-10% more sessions per month.” This way, your traffic increase is aligned with the business's revenue stream.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: Losing Sight of the Company

When your company is doing well, I know it can be easy to say you want to pivot or grow in another direction. While companies can successfully do this, you don't want your team to lose sight of how the core of your business works.

Rather than saying, “We want to start a new B2B business on top of our B2C business,” say something like, “We want to continue increasing B2C sales while researching the impact our products could have on the B2B space in the next year.”

5. Make goals time-bound by including a timeframe and deadline information.

A “time-bound” SMART goal keeps you on schedule.

Improving on a goal is great, but not if it takes too long. Attaching deadlines to your goals puts a healthy dose of pressure on your team to accomplish them.

I’ve found this helps me make consistent and significant progress in the long term.

For example, which would you prefer: increasing organic traffic by 5% every month, leading to a 30-35% increase in half a year? Or trying to increase traffic by 15% with no deadline and achieving that goal in the same timeframe?

If you picked the former, you're right.

So, what does our SMART goal look like once we bind it to a timeframe?

“Over the next three months, Clifford and Braden will work to increase the blog's organic traffic by 8-10%, reaching a total of 50,000 organic sessions by the end of August.”

As Frederik Binow, CEO at Walor, says, achieving goals is most effective when you set ambitious deadlines for yourself and your team. Without deadlines, tasks often lack specificity, leading to a decrease in motivation and urgency.

Deadlines serve as a motivating force and push individuals to overcome personal barriers through teamwork and determination.

And by consistently raising the bar, we foster a mindset where more goals seem attainable. In short, deadlines drive action and personal growth.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: No Time Frame

Having no timeframe or a really broad span of time noted in your goal will cause the effort to get reprioritized or make it hard for you to see if your team is on track.

Rather than saying, “This year, we want to launch a major campaign,” say, “In quarter one, we will focus on campaign production in order to launch the campaign in quarter two.”

Make Your SMART Goals SMART-er

Now that you know what a SMART goal is, why it‘s important, and the framework to create one, it’s time to put that information into practice.

Whether you‘re setting goals for a personal achievement or as part of hitting important marketing milestones, it’s good to start with what you want to achieve and then reverse-engineer it into a concrete SMART goal.

What I consider very important about setting goals is not to push yourself too hard. Don’t set limits beyond your capabilities.

Yes, we want to step out of our comfort zones, but that doesn’t mean we should destroy ourselves mentally and physically.

And worst of all, if you don’t achieve that goal in the end, it will eat you up inside.

This happened to me, and that’s why I’m trying to explain it to everyone now. Set your goals step by step. Don’t look for shortcuts. It doesn’t work that way.

Step by step. Realistic goals. Smart expectations. And, if things don’t go as planned, see it as a chance to learn from your mistakes.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Typography design is a fine balance of aesthetics and readability, and fonts play a crucial role in achieving that harmony. From sleek and modern typefaces to elegant serif fonts, the right typography can add character and distinction to your content.

In this post, we’ve gathered the best magazine fonts that will help you craft stunning, professional layouts that stand out on any print or digital platform. You’ll find fonts that excel in different aspects of magazine design, from bold and striking display fonts for headlines to clean and sophisticated fonts for body text.

Whether you’re working on a lifestyle magazine, fashion editorial, or business publication, these fonts offer the versatility and style you need to create polished, eye-catching designs.

Magazine – Elegant Serif Font

This is an upscale and chic type font that adds sophistication to any branding and logo design. This multifaceted font is ideal for a variety of uses, like social media posts, packaging, photography, and invitations. Its high-level legibility ensures seamless integration across projects.

Vaqoeng – Modern Magazine Font

Vaqoeng offers a modern magazine and logo font that exudes elegance and authenticity. Provided in both OTF and TTF files, this distinct display font can be used to craft attractive titles for posters, book covers, magazines, and more. Vaqoeng is set to redefine your design aesthetics with its contemporary appeal and charming simplicity.

Display Magazine – Modern Title Font

Brighten your creative projects with the Display Magazine font. This versatile font is perfect for both digital platforms and prints, ideal for anything from social media posts to personal projects. Similar to a Vogue magazine font, it lends a touch of sophistication to posters and branding. The set includes OTF, WOFF, and TTF files.

Biomorph – Magazine Font

Biomorph is a versatile, newly-released sans font family, perfect for all your design needs. Ideal for branding, publishing, titles, books, and websites, Biomorph comes in a range of weights including thin, extra light, light, regular, medium, semibold, and bold. Its variety and sleek design give you the freedom to design just the way you want.

Stinker – Modern Magazine Font

Stinker is an excellent choice for projects requiring a touch of elegance and style. Ideal for crafting striking logos, impressive magazine headers, or chic quotes, it offers a wealth of features including a variety of formats (TTF, OTF & WOFF), both uppercase and lowercase letters, ligatures, numerals, and punctuations, as well as regular and italic versions.

Daily Magazine – Serif Display Font

Discover our newest typography offering, Daily Magazine Serif Display Font. A sophisticated and modern choice for a multitude of creative projects, this font offers a versatile range of uses from logos to book covers and fashion branding. The design delicately balances both masculine and feminine tones making it a well-rounded choice.

The Real Magazine – Stylish Title Font

The Real Magazine is a unique, dry-brushed marker font perfect for various applications. Use it to add flair to logos, packaging, t-shirts, posters, book covers, hipster designs, and greeting cards. It’s also ideal for any project requiring brush lettering. This stylish title font makes every creation stand out.

Aloha Magazine – Logo & Title font

The Aloha Magazine logo and title font is a uniquely playful sans serif family boasting nine weights. Perfect for various design projects, it provides seamless typographic harmony, enhancing logos, branding, social media posts, advertisements, or product designs. The package includes Aloha Magazine .otf, .ttf, and .woff files.

Yoshida – Stylish Magazine Font

Yoshida is an elegant, stylish magazine font that provides a distinguished look to your editorial content. Primarily intended for magazines or tabloids, it adds a classic yet fresh appeal to extended paragraphs. This font will significantly enhance readability and aesthetic appeal in your print or online publication.

CS Arthemis – Magazine Blackletter Font

CS Arthemis – Magazine Blackletter Font is a stunning blend of gothic charm and historical elegance. This Medieval display serif font features intricate design details, making it the perfect choice for projects requiring a combination of tradition, authority, and classic appeal. Ideal for luxury branding, formal invitations, and themed designs, CS Arthemis ensures your creations have a distinctive, timeless aesthetic.

Dickson – Geometric Magazine Fonts

Check out Dickson, a versatile sans font with a slim and bold style. Spanning 10 font styles, Dickson boasts of 10 straight-weight variations, perfect for any type of brand, logo, magazine, or movie. Its outlined copy ensures a modern feel to your projects while also offering multilingual support for languages including French, German, Spanish, and more for global accessibility.

Fancyou – Sharp Serif Magazine Font

Fancyou font elegantly merges vintage charm with contemporary dimensions. Its distinguishing feature lies in its sharp, stylish serifs, which are ideal for modern vintage designs. Available in eight diverse styles, this open-type format font is versatile enough for logos, websites, business cards, or branding initiatives.

Bolognia – Classic Serif Magazine Font

The Bolognia is a sophisticated serif typeface, drawing inspiration from both classic and contemporary design elements. With a tall x-height, modern proportions, and contrasting strokes, Bolognia stands out in all the right ways. Versatile across six weights, it’s perfect for editorial content and headline creation that demands clarity and impact.

Merauq – Creative Magazine Font

Merauq is a creative magazine font that provides strikingly harmonious typography across varied design projects. Available in 5 weights, it’s ideal for use in logos, branding, social media posts, advertisements, and product designs. The asset includes Meraq otf, ttf, and woff files, offering a great foundation for diverse and captivating designs.

RNS Miles – Trendy Magazine Font

RNS Miles is a versatile, modern magazine font family, featuring geometric and open forms for a harmonious, low-contrast look. It’s ideally suited for headlines and titles, with seven weights and matching italics. Extended OpenType features, like alternate glyphs and fractions, add to its utility.

Mouzambik – Narrow Magazine Font

Meet Mouzambik, a condensed sans-serif magazine font with a unique and intricate personality, designed to make your projects stand out. Available in regular, Inktrap, and Smooth styles, each with italics, it’s perfect for anything from headlines and branding to websites and posters. It shines in all sizes and includes an array of ligatures, alternates, and features.

Certia – Magazine Font

Certia is a masterfully designed sans-serif font family boasting a blend of elegance and functionality. It includes 16 fonts, providing extensive language support for global communication needs. Ideal for editorial endeavors, branding projects, or digital interfaces, Certia maintains a consistent, readable form while exuding sophistication, closely aligning with varied design settings.

Etnier – Modern Display Magazine Font

Etnier is a captivating modern display font perfect for magazine layouts. This sans-serif typeface offers a striking, squared appearance for superior readability. With a dynamic range of widths, italics, and a bold, robust quality, Etnier is excellent for UI, UX designs. Included in the package are 14 versatile styles available in OTF, TTF, WOFF formats.

Vangeda – Modern Serif Magazine Font

The Vangeda is a modern and elegant serif font that comes in two styles: regular and italic. It has alternate and ligature glyph variations and supports multilingual input. Perfect for various design projects including logos, branding, advertising, and more, it adds a touch of sophistication to your work. Useful for both print and digital mediums, the Vangeda font is an asset to any designer.

Ricordo – Magazine Font

Ricordo, a next-generation Magazine Font, is meticulously crafted for optimal engagement. This typeface has the flexibility to be used across all corporate tasks and a multitude of projects, from logos and headlines to digital ads. With nine weights and multiple file formats, including TTF, OTF, WOFF, and EOT.

Salmond – Clean Magazine Font

Salmond is a clean, geometric, modern sans serif magazine font. With its tightly packed lettering and minimalist allure, it’s perfect for creating striking titles, brand logos, and impactful editorial work. Salmond offers six weight options, including Light, Regular, News, Medium, Semibold, and Bold.

Clover – Bold Magazine Font

A derivative of the Olive Typeface Family, the Clover display font is a distinctive, modern, and elegant asset delivering a bold magazine font ideal for Time Magazine-style title designs. It’s crafted with 16 versatile styles and comes in various formats like TTF, OTF, WOFF. Its strong capitals, smooth lowercase, and quirky warmth make it perfect for branding, headlines, or text overlays.

Free Magazine Fonts

Moderniz – Free Magazine Font

A beautiful, elegant display font for crafting attractive cover designs for magazine concepts. This free font comes with a stylishly bold letter design that will fit perfectly for bold magazines. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Risbeg – Free Magazine Font

Risbeg is another great free font you can use to craft magazine-style titles and headings for your design projects. This font has a professional-looking serif letter design. And it’s free to use with your personal projects.

Angrela Display – Free Magazine Font

This font is ideal for designing elegant magazine-like typography. The font comes with serif letters featuring beautiful curves and swashes. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Free Classic Magazine Font

You can download this font for free to craft stylish magazine-style titles with a classic feel. The font features a professional and minimalist design that will create a bold look for your typography. It’s free for personal use only.

Keryla – Free Magazine Font

A creative and unique font that comes with an elegant aesthetic. This font features a serif letter design with curves and serifs. The font is ideal for a modern magazine look. It’s free to use with personal projects.