Next actions: the weekly playbook

What this screen is

Next actions turns the competitor newsletters you have already analysed into a short, dated playbook. Each analysis produces three to five concrete moves a rival of that sender could make in response, and every move says what to send, when, through which channel, with what kind of offer and why now. This screen collects the most recent of those lists and stands them next to the commercial calendar. The question it answers is what to ship this week, given today's date and what your competitors just sent.

Nothing in the top half comes from your data. The one-year retail calendar, the season, the campaigns counted as live, the events in the next 60 days and the opportunity window all follow from the date alone, so two accounts open the page to the same top half on the same day. Below that sits the action list, built only from your analysed newsletters and reshaped by the lookback you choose.

Actions have no owner, no status and no done button. Reopening the page brings back the same cards with no memory of what you already did, so treat it as a Monday briefing rather than a task manager. Cards run in the order the source newsletters were analysed, newest first, so the top card is the freshest one and not the strongest. Carry the two or three moves you pick into whatever you plan in.

Open it when

• On Monday planning, when you want a shortlist of campaign moves rather than raw newsletter data.
• Before a seasonal peak such as Black Friday, Christmas, Back-to-School or Mother's Day, to see how many days remain and what competitors are already doing about it.
• When a competitor just launched something and you want the suggested counter-move with its expected impact.
• When you want a calendar sanity check on which retail events fall in the next year, and for which region and which shopper segment.
• When briefing an agency or a copywriter and you want timing, channel and offer type spelled out for each action.

Screen anatomy

The screen on 5 September 2026 with the 30-day lookback selected. The market context values are the real ones for that date.

1. Yearly calendar A one-year timeline from 7 days ago to 358 days ahead, with a Today marker and one dot per retail event, coloured rose for high relevance, amber for medium and grey for low. The header carries the date range and "34 events", and the card pins to the top of the window as you scroll.
2. Market context card A season chip (Winter, Spring, Summer or Autumn) and "Today" with the date, under a colour strip that follows the season. Everything on the card is relative to this date.
3. Opportunity window One sentence naming the best event in the next 30 days and a suggested hook, marked "Featured". This is the headline of the week.
4. Active campaigns A count badge and one green pill per campaign considered live right now. There is always at least one, the seasonal sale.
5. Trending angles A count badge, always 5, and one orange pill per message angle for the current calendar month.
6. Upcoming events One tile per event in the next 60 days. The day count sits above the word "DAYS" (singular "DAY" at exactly one), with the event name and the date in ISO form underneath. A coloured dot in the corner reads "High priority", "Medium priority" or "Low priority" on hover.
7. Lookback selector "Lookback:" followed by 7 days, 30 days and 90 days. Once the list has loaded, the right side reads "N actions from competitor analyses".
8. Action card, collapsed A "#N" index, "From:" with the competitor brand, then timing, channel and offer-type badges, each one there only when that action has it. The action sentence is the title and the expected impact sits underneath, always an AI estimate written from the newsletter content rather than a measured open or click rate. The whole card is clickable; the chevron is titled "Show more" or "Show less".
9. Action card, expanded Adds "Market rationale" (why now), "Competitor signal" (what triggered it) and a footer "Source newsletter:" with the subject line of the email that produced the action, again only where the action has them.
10. Page header and help icon "What you should do next" with its one-line description and a square help button labelled "More information". The button opens the "Market-aware next actions" explainer, which lists the seven parts of an action.
11. Event details modal Opens when you click a dot on the yearly calendar. It shows the event name, a relevance badge and a description, then lines for "Date", "Target region", "Target segment" and "Gender".
12. Loading and empty states A spinner with "Loading next actions..." while the list loads. When the lookback turns up nothing, a card reads "No next actions yet" and "Run the analyzer on recent competitor newsletters to populate this market-aware playbook." The calendar and market context card are still there above it.

Every panel explained

Yearly calendar

A rolling one-year retail calendar drawn as a single track, with one dot per event and a vertical "Today" line.

How it is calculated. The window runs from today minus 7 days to today plus 358 days, reported as 365 days. Dots are spaced by date across the track, so the gap between two dots is the gap between the two dates. Month ticks start on the first of the month after the window opens; a January tick carries the two-digit year ("Jan 27"). Past events are drawn at half opacity. In a normal year the window holds 34 events, 8 of them high relevance, 13 medium and 13 low.

How to read it. Scan right from the Today marker. Rose dots are the commercial peaks, amber the secondary moments and grey the minor ones. Hovering a dot shows the long date and a relative label ("today", "in N days", "N days ago"); clicking opens the event details modal.

Market context: season and today

A season chip and today's date, under a colour strip that changes with the season.

How it is calculated. Today is the current date in UTC. Season follows the month, with December to February winter, March to May spring, June to August summer and September to November autumn. That is the Northern Hemisphere meteorological definition. The date is formatted in your browser's locale as weekday, month and day.

How to read it. Every day count, campaign and angle on the card is relative to this date.

Opportunity window

One sentence naming the best event to build a campaign around in the next 30 days, plus a suggested hook.

How it is calculated. Only events 0 to 30 days away are eligible. High relevance beats medium, medium beats low, and between two events of equal relevance the nearer one takes the slot. The sentence gives the event name, "today" or "in N days", and a hook that is fixed for that event. Black Friday gives "biggest revenue moment of the year - tease early-access for subscribers, plan stackable bundles"; an event with no hook of its own gets "plan a themed campaign tied to the event". When nothing falls inside the 30 days, the text becomes "No major event in the next 30 days - lean into season evergreen themes (comfort, fit, lifestyle) and grow the list."

How to read it. A high-relevance event 20 days out beats a low-relevance event two days out. Events beyond 30 days never appear here, however important: on 5 September 2026 the pick is "Labor Day in 2 days" (medium relevance) rather than Halloween (high relevance, 56 days out), because Halloween is more than 30 days out.

Active campaigns

The campaign slots considered live right now, shown as green pills with a count.

How it is calculated. The list always starts with the seasonal campaign, one of "Winter Sale", "Spring Sale", "Summer Sale" or "Autumn Collection Launch". Then each upcoming event adds one named campaign while its day count sits inside that event's lead-up window. Black Friday gets 0 to 14 days ("Black Friday Week"), Christmas 0 to 21 ("Christmas / Holiday Gifting"), Halloween 0 to 21 ("Halloween Promotion"), Back-to-School 0 to 21, Easter 0 to 14 ("Easter Promotion"), Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Thanksgiving 0 to 10 each, Singles' Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day and Earth Day 0 to 7 each, and Amazon Prime Day 0 to 2 ("Anti-Prime-Day positioning"). No campaign is listed twice, and one event never contributes more than one pill.

How to read it. These are the slots competitors are most likely occupying this week. Use them as the naming layer for your own calendar; the Campaigns screen shows who is actually running them.

Trending angles

Five message angles for the current calendar month, shown as orange pills.

How it is calculated. Each month has its own fixed list of exactly five angles. September gives "back-to-school and back-to-routine", "autumn arrival and seasonal shifts", "fall product launches and refreshes", "Q4 planning and end-of-year prep" and "Labor Day and long-weekend moments".

How to read it. Copy angles or content themes for sends with no event-driven hook.

Upcoming events

A grid of countdown tiles, one per calendar event in the next 60 days.

How it is calculated. Every calendar event from today to today plus 60 days, nearest first. The day count is the event date minus today's UTC date. Relevance is fixed per event. High relevance covers Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Back-to-School, Thanksgiving, Singles' Day, Halloween and Amazon Prime Day. Medium covers Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, Green Monday, Free Shipping Day, New Year's Eve, Earth Day and International Women's Day. Everything else is low. Movable dates land on their real day each year. Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November, and Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday follow from it. Mother's Day is the second Sunday of May, Father's Day the third Sunday of June, Memorial Day the last Monday of May, and Easter moves with the church calendar.

How to read it. The big number is days until the event; the corner dot is rose for high, amber for medium and grey for low priority. A high-relevance event under about 21 days away means creative should already be in production.

Action list

One expandable card per action, aggregated from every analysis that ran inside the selected lookback.

How it is calculated. The cards run newest analysis first and stop at 100. Within a single newsletter the AI's own order survives; across newsletters the order is pure recency. Every action carries the same seven pieces of writing (the action, timing, channel, offer type, market rationale, competitor signal and expected impact), alongside the brand and subject line of the source newsletter. Channel usually reads email, email+social, email+paid or all, and expected impact usually carries a percentage, though both are free text and read however the AI wrote them.

How to read it. The title is the move; the badges are when, through which channel and with what kind of offer. Open the card for why now ("Market rationale") and what triggered it ("Competitor signal"). "From:" names the competitor whose newsletter produced the suggestion.

Event details modal

The reference sheet for one calendar event, opened from a dot on the yearly calendar.

How it is calculated. The header shows the event name, a relevance-coloured dot and a badge with the relevance word, then the description and lines for "Date" (long localised date plus a relative label, for example "Sat, Oct 31, 2026 (in 56 days)"), "Target region", "Target segment" and "Gender". Those last three are fixed editorial notes, identical on every account, and all 34 events carry them.

How to read it. Use it to decide whether a moment belongs to your audience: a US-only or male-skewed event can be dismissed quickly.

Empty state

With no actions in the lookback, the list becomes a single card, with the calendar and market context card still above it.

Metric definitions

Filters and controls

Several controls are deliberately missing. There is no brand filter, no channel or offer-type filter, no search, no sort control, no export button and no done or dismiss control on an action, and the only date range is the three lookback buttons. For a per-brand view, use each newsletter's "Next actions" tab in Newsletters.

How to use it

1. Read the opportunity window first It names the one event in the next 30 days worth building around and the hook to use. Find that event's tile in Upcoming events and note the day count; if it is a high-relevance event under about three weeks out, creative should already be in production.
2. Check Active campaigns against your own calendar The pills are the slots competitors are most likely filling this week. Anything on that list that is missing from your plan is a gap to explain or fill. Open the Campaigns screen if you want to see who is actually running them.
3. Set the lookback to fit the meeting On a Monday, 7 days shows only what competitors sent last week. When the list is thin, widen to 30 or 90 days; the count on the right tells you how much you are looking at.
4. Scan the cards for repetition, then open the strong ones The same move appearing under several "From:" brands means the market is shifting together. Expand those cards to read the Competitor signal and decide whether to follow or counter.
5. Take two or three actions out of the screen Copy the action, timing, channel and offer type into your planning tool or brief. Nothing here is saved or marked done, so the screen will show the same cards until the source analyses age out of the lookback.
6. Verify against the source email Click through to the newsletter named in "Source newsletter:" on the Newsletters screen and read the actual send before you commit budget to a counter-move.

Limits and caveats

• Every value in the market context panel comes from a fixed retail calendar and static per-month lists, not from your data or any live trend source. Two accounts see identical market context on the same day.
• "Today" follows UTC, so the date, the day counts and the season boundary can be off by one day for users in distant time zones. Seasons are Northern Hemisphere only.
• Holiday dates follow US rules, Amazon Prime Day is approximated as July 16 and Back-to-School as August 15. Relevance ratings (8 high, 13 medium, the rest low) are one global editorial opinion, not tuned to your industry.
• Expected impact percentages are AI estimates written as text. Nothing measured them and nothing benchmarked them against your account, and one card's estimate cannot be compared with another's. Do not put one in a client report as fact. Channel is free text too, so its wording varies from card to card.
• The list stops at 100 actions, so a very high-volume account will not see everything a 90-day lookback contains.
• Nothing on the playbook is saved between visits and no card can be marked done. Newsletters analysed before the next-actions section existed carry no actions at all until you re-analyse them.
• A newly analysed newsletter takes a few minutes to reach this screen, so a list opened straight after a run can be one newsletter behind.

FAQ

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