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name: newsletter-strategy
description: "Analyze newsletter performance data and produce next month's editorial calendar — grounded in audience behavior, not gut feel."

/newsletter-strategy

Publishing on gut feel produces the plateau. You keep writing what you think is good; opens hover at 35%; you can't explain why that one issue forwarded 4x. This skill forces you to read the actual signal in your data before touching an editorial calendar — then builds a strategy around the content patterns your audience has already told you they want, the formats that drive shares versus opens, and one testable growth lever for the month.

Performance Audit (last 90 days)

• Top 5 issues by open rate and bottom 5 — what topic/format/send-time distinguishes them?
• Top 5 issues by click rate — which CTAs and link types pulled best?
• Top 5 issues by forwards or social shares — this is the real loyalty signal
• Any issues where open rate was high but clicks were low? (subject line overpromised)
• Any issues where clicks were high but opens were low? (buried in the subject line)

Audience Segmentation

• Who are your 3 most distinct reader types — job title, motivation for subscribing, what they do with your content?
• Which segment drives the most shares? Which drives the most paid conversions?
• What time/day do your most engaged readers open? Do you have data or are you assuming?
• Are there topics where unsubscribe rate spikes? Name them.

Content Bets — identify the 2-3 that historically drive shares:

• What is it about those issues that made them shareable? (specificity, contrarianism, timeliness, format?)
• Are these repeatable — or were they one-time events?
• What adjacent topics haven't you covered that the same signal suggests would land?

Stop List — name the content you will stop publishing:

• Which recurring sections get skipped? (be honest — check scroll depth or click rate)
• Which topics feel relevant but have no engagement evidence?
• What are you including out of habit, not strategy?

Editorial Calendar — for each slot:

• Issue topic and format (essay, listicle, interview, case study, data breakdown)
• Primary audience segment it serves
• The one job this issue does — inform, entertain, drive action, build trust
• Why this slot, not a different week?

Growth Lever for the Month

• One specific hypothesis: "If we do X, referral signups will increase by Y because Z"
• How you will measure it
• What result would make you double down vs abandon it

Rules

1. Every editorial decision must trace to a data point, not a preference.
2. The stop list is mandatory. Strategy without deletion is a longer to-do list.
3. Each calendar slot gets a rationale. "Good content" is not a rationale.
4. The growth lever must be falsifiable. "More engagement" is not measurable.
5. Audience segments must be specific enough to disagree with each other about what to publish.

The output of this skill is an editorial brief — a one-page document your editor, writer, or VA can execute without further explanation.