Backed by Y CombinatorTwo documents and three sheets that rank next issue's topic by what your last six months of opens and clicks actually rewarded.
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What you get
Pack of 5 files: 2 documents, 3 spreadsheets
Newsletter Content Calendar TemplateIssue Calendar
Slotted is a status the sheet has to earn, not a date anyone can pencil in.
| Issue | Topic Tag | Status |
|---|---|---|
| required | ||
| required | ||
| required |
No topic tag, no move to Slotted. Engagement by Topic can only rank what the calendar actually tagged.
Newsletter open rates look healthy on average and hide a lot underneath. Mailchimp's own aggregated benchmark data puts the all-user open rate at 35.63% and click rate at 2.62%, though Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates that open figure industry-wide. What ranks for "newsletter content calendar template" is a grid: send date, topic, status, owner, with advice to keep an idea bank so an issue never starts blank. Almost none of it says which idea to pull first, so the easiest topic to write wins the slot regardless of how it performs.
This pack ties planning to the send history itself, not to guesswork about what an idea bank should contain. Engagement by Topic ranks five fixed tags by avg open and click rate, recomputed after every send. On this pack's own worked half-year, Customer Stories averaged a 42.2% open rate and 7.8% click rate across four issues against Company News's 20.6% and 1.8% across two. Idea Bank shows why that gap survives: Company News carried five ideas Ready to draft, Customer Stories carried one.
The same discipline gates the calendar: no issue reaches Slotted without a topic tag, because an issue that ships untagged never gets counted by the sheet meant to rank it. For the brief that sets one issue's angle before a writer starts, see the content brief pack. A show's own recordings are a source too: the video and podcast production pack's Clip Log includes a newsletter blurb as a standard clip, ready to drop into next issue's Idea Bank.
Issue CalendarThe Harbor Brief, biweekly newsletter. 13 issues sent this half-year.
| Issue | Topic Tag | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | Playbooks | Sent, 46.9% open |
| 12 | Product Tips | Sent, 37.5% open |
| 13 | Customer Stories | Sent, 43.8% open |
| 14 | Playbooks | Slotted |
| 15 | Idea, no tag yet |
Issue 15 can't move to Slotted without a topic tag. That's the gate working, not a stalled row.
Engagement by TopicRanked by avg open rate across the half-year's 13 issues.
| Topic | Issues | Avg Open | Avg Click |
|---|---|---|---|
| Playbooks | 1 | 46.9% | 9.4% |
| Customer Stories | 4 | 42.2% | 7.8% |
| Product Tips | 4 | 35.9% | 5.7% |
| Industry Trends | 2 | 29.4% | 3.8% |
| Company News | 2 | 20.6% | 1.8% |
Customer Stories out-opens Company News better than 2x and out-clicks it better than 4x.
Idea Bank20 backlog ideas this quarter, tagged and sourced.
| Topic | Ready | Needs owner/research |
|---|---|---|
| Company News | 5 | 1 |
| Product Tips | 3 | 2 |
| Industry Trends | 2 | 2 |
| Playbooks | 1 | 1 |
| Customer Stories | 1 | 2 |
The weakest-performing tag has the deepest bench. The second-best performer has the thinnest.
What the newsletter is and isn't, its audience, and the fixed five-tag list every issue gets measured against.
The fixed structure every issue follows plus its send cadence and mechanics; pair with the style guide and voice pack if the voice still varies by whoever drafts it.
Every issue's send date, topic tag, subject line, and status, gated so nothing reaches Slotted without a tag from the fixed list.
Avg open and click rate per tag, ranked and recomputed after every send, so planning starts from what the list already rewarded.
The backlog, tagged by topic and sourced from support tickets, sales calls, and customer check-ins, so a supply gap shows up before the calendar runs dry.
The Editorial Angle and Format Standard get written once, with the five-tag list fixed before the first real issue ships.
Each issue gets planned from Engagement by Topic's current ranking and Idea Bank's Ready rows for that tag, not from whichever idea is easiest to reach.
After every send, Issue Calendar and Engagement by Topic get updated from the actual send report, never from a guess.
Idea Bank gets refilled from support tickets, sales calls, and customer check-ins, flagged specifically when a top-ranked tag is running low.
Yes, the Word and CSV download needs no account or card. Edit with AI installs the pack in River and sets up the Editorial Angle and Format Standard from a short conversation about your program.
A generic calendar tracks send date, topic, and status, and tells you to keep an idea bank so you're never starting blank. It doesn't say which idea to pull first. This pack's Engagement by Topic ranks the five tags by their own open and click rate, so planning starts from what your list already rewarded, not from whichever idea is easiest to draft.
The editorial calendar pack runs a full content operation across formats and channels, sized to real team capacity. This pack runs one recurring send to one list, and its mechanism is narrower and specific: rank five fixed topic tags by their own open and click history, then plan the next issue against that ranking.
No. The lifecycle email program pack covers triggered sends tied to a customer's own behavior: welcome series, abandoned cart, renewal reminders. This pack runs one recurring editorial newsletter on a fixed cadence, planned issue by issue rather than triggered by an event.
Clear the worked example and leave Issue Calendar and Engagement by Topic empty rather than filling them with invented numbers. Plan the first few issues from Idea Bank and Editorial Angle alone; once four or five issues have sent, Engagement by Topic has enough per-tag data to start ranking honestly.
Five is enough to cover most programs without splitting the send history so thin that no tag gets enough issues to rank reliably. Add a sixth only for a real, recurring topic that doesn't fit the other five; renaming a tag after issues have shipped strands their history at the old name.
Written by
Co-founder & CEO, River
Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.
Tell River your newsletter's name, audience, and cadence. It sets up the Editorial Angle and Format Standard, then swaps in your own send history once you have one.
Edit with AI