Goals Overview

Goals let you turn a vague ambition like “grow the list” or “lift engagement” into a concrete, trackable target. You pick a metric and set a number to hit, and Letterhead tracks your progress automatically so your team always knows where things stand.

Prefer to have it done for you?

The Letterhead assistant (early access — rolling out to select accounts) can set, check, or retarget goals for you in conversation — “set a goal to hit a 35% open rate”. See how the assistant works.

What you can set a goal on

A goal pairs a metric with a target value. You choose the metric from a set list, and the exact options depend on the goal’s scope. Goals live at three scopes: company-wide for overall performance, brand for a single newsletter brand, and channel for an individual newsletter. A goal’s scope is set by the Goals view you add it from, and you can run goals at all three scopes at once so leadership and individual editors are each tracking the targets that matter to them.

Common examples:

• Subscriber growth — e.g., reach 10,000 total subscribers
• Open rate — e.g., lift your average open rate to 35%
• Click rate or engagement — e.g., hit a 10% click rate on a channel

Which metrics you can choose

The metric list depends on the goal’s scope:

• Channel — Open Rate, Click Rate, Click-to-Open Rate, Total Subscribers, New Subscribers (monthly), Loyalists, New & Engaged, and Ghosts.
• Company — Contacts, Active Readers (30d), Active Clickers (30d), Monthly Net Growth, and New Subscribers (monthly).
• Brand — Contacts, Monthly Net Growth, and New Subscribers (monthly).

Set a goal

1. Open the company, brand, or channel whose Goals page you want to add a goal to.
2. Choose Add goal.
3. In the Add a goal dialog, fill in the two fields:
   • Metric — pick what to track; the available metrics depend on the goal’s scope (see the list above).
   • Target — the number you want to reach. The field adapts to the metric — a percentage for rates, a whole number for counts.
4. Select Add goal to save it.

A goal’s scope is set by where you add it: add one from the company Goals page for a company-wide target, from a brand’s page for that brand, or from a channel’s page for a single newsletter.

Set multiple goals

You can add goals at different scopes and run them side by side:

• A company-wide goal for overall newsletter performance
• Brand-level goals for each newsletter brand
• Channel-specific goals for individual newsletters

Track progress on the Goals page

Every goal appears on the Goals page, which gives you a centralized view of all your performance targets and tracks your progress toward reaching them.

Access the page

Open the company, brand, or channel you want to see goals for — each opens to its Goals page. What you see is scoped to where you are: the company page shows company goals, and a brand or channel page shows that brand’s or channel’s goals.

Goal cards

Each goal appears as a card showing:

• The current value
• The metric it tracks
• A status indicator — Above goal, Below goal, or Close. For lower-is-better metrics like Ghosts, this reads Under limit or Over limit instead.
• A short context line — how far you are above or below your target, or the percentage of the way there
• The target you set

Each card’s status tells you at a glance whether you’re above, below, or close to a goal, so you can catch the ones that are falling behind. Check in regularly to see which goals are on track and which need attention.

Delete or change a goal

Goals don’t have an edit mode. To remove a goal, select the X in the corner of its card — it’s removed right away, with no confirmation step. To change a target, delete the goal and add it again with the new number.

Tips for useful goals

• Make targets specific. “Reach a 35% open rate” is trackable; “improve open rate” isn’t.
• Match the scope to the owner. Set company goals for the metrics leadership cares about, and channel goals for the targets an individual editor controls.
• Don’t over-set. A handful of focused goals keeps the dashboard meaningful; dozens of overlapping ones make progress hard to read.
• Revisit and adjust. As priorities shift, remove a goal you no longer need with the X on its card and add a new one with an updated target.