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Welcome to the 2024 Advocacy Benchmark Report!

Trends, Analysis, & Best Practices from 455 Million Advocacy Emails

VoterVoice’s popular advocacy benchmark report is back again in its sixth year. As FiscalNote’s flagship advocacy solution, we at VoterVoice are delighted to bring you the latest edition of this highly anticipated report, which analyzes data from 2023 and the first half of 2024, providing a comprehensive view of advocacy campaign performance and trends. 

We reviewed more than 455 million email messages sent in 2023 and the first half of 2024, over 21 million pageviews to VoterVoice clients’ Action Centers, more than 12.7 million text messages, and over 28,000 advocacy campaigns, and this report is packed with those valuable findings from a busy year and a half in advocacy. These numbers represent more than 2,000 organizations in 50 industries, each one making an impact on important issues affecting advocates, voters, and citizens.

In this report, we bring you data and analysis on 

In this report, we bring you data and analysis on

Overall and industry-specific advocacy email open and action rates

Best time of the year, hour of the day, and day of the week to send advocacy emails

Mobilization rates from 50 industries in 17 sectors

The organizations included in this report range from small and large nonprofits to corporations and trade associations, from both sides of the aisle, and who advocate in support of, or against, the widest spectrum of causes and issues imaginable. 

Advocacy professionals don’t have it easy — especially during an election year. Eighty-three percent of advocacy professionals we surveyed believe the election year will impact their work, citing higher levels of policy uncertainty and challenges in finding alignment on issues as top concerns.

We start the report with a comprehensive view of 2023, and then we include a section with data from the first six months of 2024, so you have access to the most up-to-date metrics to aid your digital advocacy efforts during the rest of the year and beyond.

We hope you find this data-led research report insightful and that it helps you better refine your strategy and find scalable digital advocacy success.

Categories Used

Open Rate

The percentage of recipients who received your emails in their inboxes and opened them, regardless of whether they had a call-to-action or not.

Action Rate

The percentage of recipients who opened your call-to-action emails and followed through by taking the action you requested of them.

Call to Action

Emails in which an organization asks something of the recipients. Sign a petition, email a lawmaker, send a tweet, etc.

Informational

Emails, such as newsletters, updates, etc., that do not include an “ask.”

Unsubscribe Rate

The number of people who saw your email in their inbox and decided its content wasn’t relevant to them, so they asked to be taken off your email list.

Deliverability Rate

The percent of emails that were successfully delivered to the intended recipient. This number is often affected by old addresses or lists not being updated.

Messages

The number of emails sent using VoterVoice. There could be thousands of emails sent as part of one campaign, which is why the number of messages is always higher than the number of campaigns.

Campaigns

The number of campaigns sent through VoterVoice. Each campaign could have a varied number of total emails sent, which is why the number of campaigns is always lower than the number of messages.

2023 Baseline Metrics

The overarching trend of 2023 shows that open rates are on the rise. The overall open rate surpassed 41 percent, up from approximately 36 percent last year, a figure which was already higher than any time in the previous five years. The action rate for emails sent through VoterVoice in 2023 was 6.8 percent, down from 8.3 percent the previous year, which could be attributed to the fact that 2022 was also an election year with the midterm elections. 

Advocacy teams across the board sent over 306.7 million emails using VoterVoice, prompting their advocates and supporters to send more than 12.7 million messages to their government representatives in 2023.  

Thanks to VoterVoice’s technology and human curation of outgoing messages that resolve any technical issues, deliverability rates for campaigns sent through VoterVoice were above 98 percent, ensuring your advocates actually receive your emails.

41.7
Open Rate
6.8
Action Rate
0.1
Unsubscribe Rate
98.3
Deliverability Rate
306.7
Messages Sent

VoterVoice clients who used the track and resend capabilities nearly doubled their action rates. About 27 percent of clients leveraged this feature in 2023, making it easy for them to automatically follow up with advocates who haven’t taken action yet. 

“We can automate resending alerts to people who hadn’t responded,” said Seth Chase, government affairs director at the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses, a VoterVoice client. “I’ve done that a fair amount in the past because I see that I get a significantly higher response rate if I resend the alert, but I had to do it manually. Well, now it’s automated. And that’s wonderful.”

SMS for Advocacy

Text messaging shot up in popularity for advocacy campaigns in 2023. From 6 million+ messages in 2022 to more than 8,400,000 advocacy text messages were sent by VoterVoice clients in 2023 — the highest volume ever since we started tracking in 2016. Open rates for SMS in 2023 were the highest since 2020 at 6.3 percent and action rates were 1.4 percent.

Baseline Metrics by Message Type

We broke down the emails sent through VoterVoice by type: informational vs. call to action. Just like we’ve seen in previous years, informational emails have slightly higher open rates than call-to-action emails, but call-to-action emails are gaining ground. Open rates for call-to-action emails now perform nearly as well as informational emails, indicating that advocates are willing to act and spend their time making a difference.

Unsubscribe rates remained low year over year for both email types in 2023 and deliverability rates stayed high, indicating that VoterVoice clients practiced good “list hygiene” and kept their contact lists updated and engaged.

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Baseline Metrics by Targeted Campaign

VoterVoice users are able to specify targets for their call-to-action email campaigns. Keeping with the trend in past years, state-level campaigns had the highest volume and highest action rate. We’ve repeatedly seen that advocacy professionals get better results when they connect their issues and action calls to their advocates’ daily lives, and the success of state-level campaigns drives this home.

In our 2023 State of Government Affairs and Advocacy Report, we asked professionals where their public policy issues are mostly based, and unsurprisingly the majority — 77 percent — said their issues are based at the state level, with issues at the federal level following closely at 68 percent. More than half of advocacy professionals surveyed said they expect to see state governments most shape the landscape for their industry or organization in the next five years.

Advocacy Challenges in 2023

We asked our clients in advocacy roles what causes the most anxiety in their day-to-day jobs. The biggest challenge was a team size that is too small (40 percent said this causes them stress) and driving advocates to take action (37 percent agree on this). Another major stressor is a lack of budget (36 percent) and showing the ROI of advocacy efforts (34 percent).

With the 2024 election cycle top of mind for many, we asked advocacy professionals how they anticipate the 2024 election cycle will impact their work. Fourty-seven percent agreed there will be a higher level of uncertainty; 44 percent believe the election will significantly increase the intensity and stress of their day-to-day work; and 40 percent believe the election will make it harder to get advocates’ attention.

2023 Action Center Metrics

Traffic to VoterVoice clients’ Action Centers was strong. Action Centers are the best way to coordinate activity around your issues and your advocacy campaigns. More than 5 million users visited your action centers in 2023, for a total of 16 million overall pageviews.

5.3
Total Users
16.0
Total Pageviews
0:01:05
Avg. Time on Page

Note: In 2023, our action center analytics were affected by technical issues that resulted in a three-week reporting gap, between October 4 and October 26. The issue also affected data collection on gender and age for this report.

How Did People Find Action Centers?

As we have seen in the past, in 2023, direct traffic was still the number one traffic driver to VoterVoice clients’ Action Centers, with just over half of all traffic reaching Action Centers this way. This means advocates reached your pages either with a direct link they typed on their browser, maybe through a link sent via text, or perhaps your supporters have your page bookmarked and keep coming back to take action.

Traffic from referrals accounted for nearly 36 percent of traffic, up 10 percent from the previous year. Referral traffic to your action centers came from another website outside of the main search engines and social networks. This could be your main website or your partners’ websites linking back to your action center.

Social media traffic was a notable driver as well. However, it continues to drop, from nearly 16 percent in 2021, 11 percent in 2022, to now just over 8 percent in 2023. Still, social media continues to be a great driver of awareness for your organization and issues. It’s always a good idea to keep an eye out for any trends or new networks that show up to ensure you meet your audience where they are.

Organic search traffic (coming from Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) will be interesting to watch in the coming years. With AI on the rise and generated answers showing up at the top, it’s not surprising organic search traffic has seen some declines — and might see more in the future. Still, it’s an important way action centers can get new eyeballs, especially on hot-button issues. Some advocates rely on search engines to find new ways to take action on the issues they care about. Organic search is stil a powerful way to find and recruit new advocates.


Pro Tip: Focus on Best Practices in Advocate Communications

We asked VoterVoice clients with the highest levels of engagement in 2023 to share their tactics for success. Here are their best practices to communicate effectively with advocates:

“The things that we focus on are:

  • Subject lines – we need to indicate action and topic to busy physicians to catch their eye.
  • Keeping the action items in the email “above the fold” so they don’t have scroll.
  • We aim for consistency in our timing and branding so that members recognize our emails.”

— Amanda Allen, Director, Communications and Office Management, New York Chapter American College of Physicians

Action Center Traffic by Social Network

Social media is a cost effective, engaging way to mobilize your supporters and expand the reach of your advocacy campaigns. As in previous years, Facebook remains by far the number one social network for driving traffic to your Action Centers. Twitter (now known as X) doubled in popularity this year, bringing in over 16 percent of traffic. Instagram and LinkedIn were other popular social networks that brought advocates to your action centers.

Adding new platforms to the mix can seem like an onerous task on top of everything else you have to do. However, staying on top of the social media platforms your audience is using is vital for driving engagement from your advocates, recruiting new ones, and increasing the visibility of your issues.  


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Action Center Traffic by Device

A few years ago, mobile traffic was just starting to emerge as the device people used the most to access VoterVoice clients’ Action Centers. But in the last three years, that lead has grown significantly, now with almost three quarters of traffic coming from mobile devices.  

What does this mean for advocacy? Create your content — emails, subject lines, and social media posts — always keeping in mind that most people will be consuming it from their mobile devices. The VoterVoice Action Center is fully mobile-optimized by default. Our email templates use industry-standard mobile optimization, and we even display both the desktop and mobile views when you preview a broadcast!


2023 Monthly Metrics

Let’s jump into 2023 numbers to dissect how your advocates engaged with your campaigns throughout the year. We’ll point out some of the significant patterns that can help you sharpen your advocacy strategy.

In 2023, there were more than 18,000 campaigns launched from VoterVoice with more than 307,000 million emails sent.

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Monthly Email Message Volume

Constant from previous years, March tops the list of busiest months for email volume during the height of many state sessions, followed by June and May as sessions start to adjourn. July and December saw the largest dips in email message volume, which could be an opportunity to get more attention for your issues in a less competitive space and as state legislators start to pre-file bills for the following year.

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Monthly Engagement Metrics

Looking a bit deeper into each month of 2023, we see that open rates are highest in September and lowest in January. The highest action rates are in March and November, with the lowest in August during Congress’ summer recess. Overall, monthly fluctuations in open rates and action rates remain relatively minor while deliverability rates stayed steady in the high 90th percentile.

Pro Tip: Focus on Subject Lines

We asked VoterVoice clients with the highest levels of engagement in 2023 to share their tactics for success. Here are their best practices for a successful email campaign: 

“We only have one shot to make a first impression on our members, it’s crucial that our email subject lines are eye-catching, and that the body of our emails are written clearly.

We keep the asks simple and provide clear context whenever reaching out to advocates. We’re mindful of their schedules and try to send out emails in the morning, or around lunchtime when we know people are more likely to be scrolling. This, combined with our on-the-ground advocacy ambassadors and volunteers, work to encourage campaign participation.”

— Dawn M. Bauman, CAE, Chief Strategic Officer, Community Associations Institute

Monthly Metrics: Call-to-Action Emails

Let’s focus specifically on call-to-action campaigns in 2023. VoterVoice clients saw the highest open rates in March as well as the highest action rates (tied with November). 

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Monthly Metrics: Informational Emails

In 2023, open rates for informational emails continued to climb, surpassing the rates we’ve seen in previous years. September reached nearly 44 percent open rates, which is the highest open rate for informational emails we’ve seen. 

Unsubscribe rates remained impressively low throughout the year, meaning your advocates wanted to hear from you and remained engaged all year. 

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2023 Hourly and Daily Metrics

Figuring out the best date and time combination to send an email campaign is not easy — even for the most seasoned advocacy professionals. It’s crucial to make sure your message catches people when they are most likely to open it and take action. You also want to avoid avoiding competing for attention with the many other emails arriving on any given day. 

Similar to the last four years, in 2023 most campaigns happened between business hours: 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., with the biggest surge in activity between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. VoterVoice clients usually saw the highest overall open rates at 5 p.m, followed by 7 p.m. 

Read on for a closer look at these metrics and to find the best date/time combinations for your advocacy campaigns.

Hourly Metrics: Campaign Volume by Time of Day

Most VoterVoice clients sent email campaigns between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. in 2023, following the trend of past years. That continues to be an effective strategy, since open and action rates were overall high this year. However, open rate data from 2023 shows that some campaigns may perform better after-hours. 

Your particular industry, audience demographic, or action request might mean the day and time you send your campaign requires some tweaking, however. Advocacy communications are never one-size-fits-all, but require finesse and careful understanding of your own metrics and audience.

Hourly Metrics: Engagement by Time of Day

Just like naps, when it comes to engagement the best open rates happen in the afternoon. However, this year the best action rates were at 9 a.m — by a significant margin. This may be when advocates are just logging on to check their email for the day and have the time and energy to take the requested action. Action rates are also high at lunchtime and at 7 p.m., when advocates may have more downtime.

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Hourly Metrics: Call-to-Action Emails

For call-to-action campaigns, open rates are highest in the afternoon and evening, while action rates peak at 9 a.m. It appears that quieter periods during the day may lead to higher open rates, but mornings may be the best time to drive action.

Hourly Metrics: Informational Emails

Informational emails tend to see slightly higher open rates during the afternoon. The highest open rate for VoterVoice clients’ informational email campaigns — 43.8 percent — was at 5 p.m. 

Daily Metrics

Consistent with previous years, Friday is the busiest day for advocacy campaigns in terms of volume. Wednesday has the highest action rate, at 7.8 percent.

In 2022, we noted that weekends did not perform as well as week days. In contrast, in 2023, Saturday takes the lead for highest open rates — but Sunday saw the lowest.

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Best Day/Time Matrix

Looking at the open and action rates per day and per hour, we saw that in 2023 VoterVoice clients saw the highest open rate on Saturdays at 7 p.m. The absence of action rate data indicates that these campaigns were all informational, which may have influenced open rates. Additionally, the fact that a very low volume of emails was sent on Saturdays, which factors into this number. Nonetheless, the results are telling — perhaps advocates are not party animals!

There are many opportunities to conduct successful campaigns throughout the week when advocates are likely to take action. For example, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. show positive open and action rate combinations.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Open Action Open Action Open Action Open Action Open Action Open Action Open Action
7:00 41.6% 1.9% 39.0% 4.8% 41.3% 8.0% 39.3% 6.5% 38.4% 4.2% 49.6% 1.7% 46.3%
8:00 36.2% 9.7% 39.1% 7.8% 36.2% 8.2% 39.9% 3.8% 39.8% 4.4% 46.7% 19.4% 37.4%
9:00 37.9% 7.6% 39.4% 11.4% 38.8% 8.0% 38.7% 8.5% 40.7% 8.3% 36.2% 7.8% 40.7% 8.5%
10:00 40.7% 6.3% 39.5% 5.6% 40.2% 7.1% 42.4% 7.5% 40.0% 7.8% 41.4% 2.7% 36.2% 0.0%
11:00 42.0% 6.0% 41.6% 4.8% 43.4% 11.0% 44.0% 5.8% 43.1% 5.5% 38.3% 13.6% 42.4% 10.1%
12:00 46.2% 6.5% 42.0% 6.1% 42.6% 7.3% 40.4% 3.6% 40.9% 4.9% 43.5% 3.6% 46.5% 2.3%
13:00 40.9% 7.0% 42.4% 6.5% 41.9% 6.6% 43.4% 8.9% 43.3% 7.6% 39.3% 11.3% 45.0% 10.8%
14:00 42.2% 5.3% 41.6% 7.5% 40.3% 6.4% 43.9% 5.9% 42.9% 6.3% 37.5% 3.8% 39.8% 1.1%
15:00 43.0% 6.6% 41.8% 5.8% 41.6% 8.9% 41.7% 9.1% 44.0% 5.2% 43.8% 3.8% 40.4% 1.8%
16:00 43.1% 6.9% 40.6% 5.9% 42.6% 3.1% 43.0% 4.1% 40.5% 5.1% 41.1% 9.9% 37.7% 2.3%
17:00 43.3% 5.9% 43.6% 5.2% 44.3% 8.8% 45.0% 6.2% 44.3% 7.3% 44.6% 0.6% 40.5% 0.7%
18:00 42.2% 12.6% 43.9% 3.8% 42.6% 7.1% 38.0% 12.5% 44.5% 9.3% 39.5% 12.4% 30.5% 3.5%
19:00 47.4% 8.7% 40.6% 7.0% 40.7% 11.9% 38.7% 6.0% 50.4% 6.1% 58.7% 29.7% 1.3%
 Best
 Better
 Good
 OK
 Lowest

2023 Sector Metrics

So far, we’ve analyzed the overall metrics from all VoterVoice clients across a range of sectors and industries. Let’s break down the metrics from 17 sectors to help you compare how your industry performs and determine how to gain an advantage in your field.

Sectors covered:

  • Agribusiness
  • Civil Servants/Public Officials
  • Clergy & Religious Organizations
  • Communications/Electronics
  • Education
  • Energy & Natural Resources
  • Finance, Insurance & Real Estate
  • Food & Beverage
  • Health
  • Ideological/Single-Issue
  • Infrastructure
  • Labor
  • Lawyers & Lobbyists
  • Misc Business
  • Non-Profit Institutions
  • Hospitality
  • Others

Overall Sector Metrics

The sectors are divided into 17 broad categories comprising 50 industries. The labor sector saw the highest open rates just like the previous two years, with a 48 percent open rate. Non-profit institutions had by far the highest average action rate at 14.2 percent, followed by clergy and religious organizations at 11.5 percent. 

Agribusiness Metrics

We looked at advocacy campaigns across agribusiness industries including crop producers, dairy farming businesses, food farmers, agricultural and farm services, and agricultural associations. We also assessed agribusiness that included processors, agri-products, and services.

Overall, August saw the strongest open rates, followed by January, February, and March, respectively.  Within agribusiness, the highest open rates were seen by food processing and sales, alongside crop production and basic processing. The dairy industry saw the second-highest action rate of all industries, with the top spot going to single-issue organizations focused on women’s issues.

Business Metrics

The sector is made up of a variety of industries including services, associations, sales, and many other miscellaneous organizations. 

Action rates were the highest in January, followed by March and February, but open rates in this sector were best in April and July. Retail sales had the highest action rates within the business sector in 2023.

Civil Servants & Public Officials

Organizations including federal, state, and municipal employees, as well as fire and police, state and local government entities, and other employee organizations make up the civil servant and public official sector.

This year, open rates for civil servants/public officials dropped approximately 10 percent, changing a two-year trend for the sector, which had previously seen the second-highest open rates. Action rates are still characteristically low, reaching a high of 3.8 percent in March only. However, no call-to-action campaigns were sent by VoterVoice clients in many months of the year.

This sector saw its highest open rate in September, reaching 52.1 percent. 

Clergy & Religious Organizations

We looked at data from organizations such as ministries, charities, conferences, dioceses, religious institutes, and associations, among others. Religious institutions that operate education or healthcare facilities are not included in these metrics but are analyzed as part of their core industry.

This sector saw much higher open rates than in 2021 and 2022 respectively, with a high of 46.6 percent in December (probably due to religious holidays) and a low of 42.3 percent in August. However, action rates peaked in September at 15.9 percent and remained high year-round, putting this sector among the top 10 for action rates.

Communications & Electronics

We looked at advocacy data from the electronics manufacturing and equipment industry; internet organizations and associations; TV, movie, and entertainment fields; as well as other miscellaneous communications and electronics organizations.

Open rates soared to 57.9 percent in May for this sector, which coincides with the nationwide Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

Education

Organizations included in the education sector range from higher education and K-12 to school boards and PTA organizations. 

Action rates were astronomically high in November, reaching 23 percent most likely due to proposed $22.1 billion of education funding cuts in Congress at this time last year with the FY2024 Labor-HHS Education Bill. Some VoterVoice clients in this sector got their advocates fired up to oppose this bill.

Industry sentiment

Small team sizes, lack of budget, and the fear of missing something important related to relevant legislation/regulation are the top concerns that keep advocacy professionals in the education industry up at night. Sixty-nine percent say the number of issues their team is tasked with following has increased in the last year, and 62 percent anticipate a higher level of policy uncertainty at work due to the election year. Clearly, in 2024, there will be little rest for government affairs teams in education!

Energy & Natural Resources

We include aggregate data from oil and gas producers and utilities, mining, renewal and fossil fuels, electric utilities, and waste management. It also includes the wildlife and fisheries category as a natural resource.

Like previous years, the sector saw its highest action rates in April. Overall, the energy and natural resources sector saw consistently good open rates throughout 2023, peaking in September. The area of electric utilities once again saw especially good action rates within this industry.

Industry sentiment

When surveyed, government affairs professionals in the energy and natural resources sector say that their biggest challenge is not being able to show the value or impact of their team’s work. Sixty-seven percent anticipate a higher level of policy uncertainty at work this year as a result of the election.

Finance, Insurance & Real Estate

In this sector, we look at data from banks, credit unions, finance companies, securities, mortgage bankers, broker organizations, and the broad category of insurance.

Unlike previous years, in 2023, May saw the highest action rates for this sector. Open rates peaked in August, following the last of the Fed’s interest rate increases in July, and coinciding with the deadly wildfires in Maui and the height of hurricane season, and remained high throughout the rest of the year.

Industry sentiment

A majority (67 percent) of government affairs professionals in this industry say their biggest challenge is the fear of missing something important related to relevant legislation and regulation in their industry. This is likely because 89 percent of these professionals say the number of issues their team is tasked with following has increased in the last year. Despite their fears and stresses, a majority often feel engaged (involved and enthusiastic at work), with many considering their work meaningful.

Food and Beverage

This sector includes a variety of food and drink packaging, manufacturing, and marketing organizations. Some examples are feed and grain; confectionary; fruits and vegetables; and wine, beer, spirits, soft drinks, and water. 

Open rates remained fairly high throughout the year, starting strong at over 54 percent in January. Action rates remained low throughout the year, peaking at just 4 percent in March.

Health

This sector includes health professionals, hospitals and nursing home facilities, health services, pharmaceuticals, and health products and supplies.  

Open rates held steady throughout the year, though action rates peaked in June and July. 

Industry sentiment

This may be a big year for government affairs and professionals in the healthcare industry, 67 percent of whom say their work is primarily focused at the federal level. Coupled with the fact that many healthcare advocacy professionals (47 percent) are working in teams of three people or less, it’s a busy time for these professionals.

Hospitality & Culture

This sector’s industries include everything from lodging and tourism organizations to recreational and live entertainment industries.

Campaign open rates remained high throughout the year, surpassing 50 percent in February and September.

Infrastructure

The sector is formed by contractors, transportation, automotive, the construction of roads and bridges, and everything else in between, as well as miscellaneous organizations such as those dealing with inland waterways, sewage, power lines, and so forth. 

In 2023, the infrastructure sector saw steady open rates throughout the year, with the highest action rates in December and May respectively. Within the infrastructure industry, the topic of home builders saw one of the highest action rates across industries, perhaps due to an increasing housing shortage and incentives for home builders within the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Labor

The labor sector classifies miscellaneous unions, including industrial, building, transportation, and public-sector unions. 

This sector saw fairly strong open and action rates throughout the year, with a significant peak in open rates in July at almost 70 percent.

Lawyers & Lobbyists

This sector saw fairly consistent open and action rates throughout the year, with November and December performing slightly better for both metrics. Overall, open rates for this sector remain lower than many others.

Industry sentiment

When surveyed, 58 percent of lawyers and lobbyists indicated that their biggest challenge is the fear of missing something important related to relevant legislation or regulation. A majority — 67 percent — anticipate a higher level of policy uncertainty at work due to the election year.

Nonprofits

This sector encompasses nonprofits, foundations, and philanthropic organizations that don’t naturally fall into other categories covered earlier. It excludes single-issue or ideological organizations. Examples include museums, charitable foundations, philanthropic endowments, and trusts.

The nonprofit sector saw a surprising variance among action rates throughout the year, with the first half of the year seeing consistent double-digit rates (peaking at 25 percent in April) before falling off in June. This is likely attributable to state sessions taking place in the first half of the year.

Other Industries

In the “other” sector, we compile the data for all the organizations that don’t comfortably fall into any of the other sectors. We include them here because their numbers contribute to creating the overall metrics laid out in the overview at the beginning of this section.

Single-Issue Organizations

This sector saw average open rates and action rates in 2023, with action rates significantly lower than the previous year. Women’s issues saw incredibly high action rates at 33.6 percent, putting this ‘industry’ in first place for action rates across all industries. This may likely be the result of major developments in policy in 2022 with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and many states still reacting to the ruling throughout 2023. For example, Nebraska passed a 12-week abortion ban in May, while Wisconsin resumed abortion services in September.

Ideological or single-issue organizations can be focused on specific issues, such as gun control, immigration, groups supporting a single candidate, abortion, human rights, and so on. These types of organizations tend to have passionate supporters and detractors, which could explain the consistently good action rates.

2023 Industry Metrics

Let’s analyze which industries got the most engagement on their 2023 campaigns. We look specifically at open and action rates, as well as the entire breakout of industries within the sectors studied.

Top 10 Industry Open Rates

The top 10 open rates within specific industries rose in the last three years, with the top industry open rate — chemical and related manufacturing — hitting over 68 percent, up from 63 percent last year.

Sector Industry Open Rate
Business Chemical & Related Manufacturing 68.1
Business Business Services 63.2
Infrastructure Building Materials & Equipment 50.5
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate Real Estate 48.8
Misc Business Misc Services 48.6
Health Health Professionals 48.3
Labor Public Sector Unions 48.0
Business Retail Sales 47.2
Communications/Electronics Printing & Publishing 47.1
Infrastructure Construction Services 46.9

Top 10 Industry Action Rates

Women’s issues and dairy had the top action rates in 2023, consistent with last year’s findings. Women’s issues lead by a sizeable margin, perhaps reflective ofthe Supreme Court decision and state-level reactions to it.

Industry Sector Action Rate
Women's Issues Ideological/Single-Issue 33.6
Dairy Agribusiness 18.9
Electric Utilities Energy & Natural Resources 15.7
Non-Profit Institutions Non-Profit Institutions 14.2
Home Builders Infrastructure 13.8
Clergy & Religious Organizations Clergy & Religious Organizations 11.5
Food Processing & Sales Agribusiness 10.7
Human Rights Ideological/Single-Issue 10.1
Oil & Gas Energy & Natural Resources 10.0
Misc Agriculture Agribusiness 9.5

Industry Metrics Overall

2024 First Half Overview

As the pressure heats up in the leadup to the 2024 federal election, how did advocacy campaigns fare during such a critical time?

In this next section, we look at the data for the first six months of 2024 and how that compares to the same period in 2023, illuminating the latest data and potentially what is to come for the remainder of the year.

Baseline Metrics Jan-June 2024

In the first six months of 2024, we see open rates that are significantly lower than the previous two years, which could mean some advocate fatigue as we near the elections. At the same time, the action rate has out-performed recent years, and deliverability remains high.

SMS for Advocacy Jan-June 2024

Text messages continue to grow as a medium to communicate with advocates. It’s no surprise, as 48 percent of customers prefer communication to come from text messages, according to SMS Comparison. VoterVoice clients sent more than 4.3 million advocacy text messages in the first half of 2024, with an open rate of 6.5 percent and a higher action rate of 1.4 percent.

Baseline Metrics by Message Type Jan-June 2024

When it comes to informational and call-to-action emails specifically, the first six months of 2024 saw strong open rates for both categories, getting the year off to a good start. Action rates reached just 6.6 percent for call-to-action emails.

The Anatomy of a Killer Call to Action: Engage Supporters and Drive Action

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Baseline Metrics by Targeted Campaign Jan-June 2024

Most of the campaigns in the first half of 2024 happened at the state level, which follows the trends we’ve seen every year. State campaigns had the highest open rates, while combined federal+state campaigns had the highest action rates, which is a positive sign of your advocates understanding the urgency of your messages.

Monthly Email Message Volume Jan-June 2024

During the first half of 2024, VoterVoice users sent over 147 million emails through our platform. Message volume spiked in May, indicating that this was a busy time for advocacy organizations as most state sessions adjourned.

Monthly Engagement Metrics Jan-June 2023

January brought the best open rates during the first half of 2024, while June brought the highest action rates, with April close behind. 2024 has seen strong engagement so far; advocates are showing up to open and click on your email advocacy campaigns.

Monthly Metrics: Call-to-Action Emails Jan-June 2024

Call-to-action emails saw open rates above 40 percent in the first three months of 2024 during the height of state sessions, before dropping to 38 percent and below in the second quarter of the year. Unsubscribe rates remained low throughout the period.

Monthly Metrics: Informational Emails Jan-June 2024

Open rates for informational emails followed a similar trend to call-to-action emails, starting strong in January and gradually declining over the six month period. Unsubscribe and failure rates remained consistently low, indicating that supporters are engaged and want to receive your messages.

How Did People Find Action Centers? Jan-June 2024

In the first six months of 2024, more than 2.7 million people visited your action centers. Over 60 percent of people found VoterVoice clients’ action centers primarily through direct traffic, an increase from 2023. This could indicate that advocates bookmarked your organizations’ action centers so they could keep coming back to access the latest information.


Action Center Metrics by Social Network Jan-June 2024

Traffic to action centers from social networks remained high. Facebook kept its leading position as the primary social network traffic driver, but has seen decreases in the past several years, going from 96 percent in 2020, to 82 percent in 2023, to 79 percent in 2024 as other platforms rise in prominence.

This year, both Instagram and LinkedIn have overtaken Twitter as the second-strongest social media traffic driver, while LinkedIn rose in popularity.


Overall Sector Metrics Jan-June 2024

In the first half of 2024, the finance, insurance, and real estate sector saw the highest open rate at almost 50 percent, taking the top spot from the hospitality sector last year. Communications and electronics were close behind with an open rate of 49.5 percent.

At 12.8 percent, the highest action rate went to clergy and religious organizations, continuing last year’s trend. This was closely followed by agribusiness. 

Top 10 Industry Open Rates Jan-June 2024

Turning to the top 10 industries within each sector, the finance, insurance and real estate industry within the real estate sector saw the highest open rate, with a 52.6 percent average for the first half of 2024. The labor and health industry weren’t far behind with strong open rates.

Sector Industry Open Rate
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate Real Estate 52.6
Labor Public Sector Unions 50.6
Health Health Professionals 48.2
Non-Profit Institutions Non-Profit Institutions 45.3
Clergy & Religious Organizations Clergy & Religious Organizations 42.5
Education Education 42.2
Agribusiness Agricultural Services/Products 39.8
Health Hospitals/Nursing Homes 39.4
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate Insurance 39.3
Health Health Services/HMOs 39.1

Top 10 Industry Action Rates Jan-June 2024

When it came time to mobilize advocates to take action, clergy and religious organizations had the best results, with an average action rate of nearly 13 percent. Agricultural services and products, as well as business associations, also saw high action rates, at 11.4 percent and 10.1 percent respectively.

Sector Industry Action Rate
Clergy & Religious Organizations Clergy & Religious Organizations 12.8
Agribusiness Agricultural Services/Products 11.4
Business Business Associations 10.1
Infrastructure General Contractors 9.6
Ideological/Single-Issue Republican/Conservative 9.5
Ideological/Single-Issue Human Rights 8.9
Ideological/Single-Issue Misc Issues 7.6
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate Insurance 7.1
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate Real Estate 6.4
Labor Public Sector Unions 6.4

Methodology

We reviewed more than 455 million email messages sent in 2023 and the first half of 2024, over 21 million pageviews to VoterVoice clients’ Action Centers, over 12.7 million text messages, and more than 28,000 advocacy campaigns, and this report is packed with those valuable findings from a busy year and a half in advocacy. These numbers represent more than 2,000 organizations in 50 industries, each one making an impact on important issues affecting advocates, voters, and citizens.

In this comprehensive, data-driven report we looked at several thousand advocacy platform users over 2023 and the first six months of 2024. For this report our research and engineering teams looked at the advocacy data from more than 28,000 advocacy campaigns, coming from more than 2,000 organizations, resulting in over 455 million emails to advocates.

For the email metrics, we divided the advocacy campaigns into two categories: informational and call to action. Information campaigns have no specific ask but provide information content including newsletters or educational emails. More than 18,500 of the campaigns sent were informational.

Call-to-action campaigns are meant to drive advocates to an advocacy effort. Over 9,800 campaigns encouraged the recipients to do something, such as email a lawmaker. For these, we measured what the follow-through on the requested action was. Those are the “action” rates.

Once we had all that data, we started to break up the email open and action rates by sector and industry, to see if there were significant differences between the sectors.

Seventeen different sectors were identified based on large groupings, which were then broken down into 50 industries. For example, health could include everything from nursing homes to professional medical organizations to medical device industries to pharmaceuticals.

To keep our reporting accurate, we did not include any industries for which we had fewer than 10 clients to ensure a reasonable sample size of campaigns and to maintain client confidentiality.

About Us

FiscalNote (NYSE: NOTE) is a leader in policy and global intelligence. By uniquely combining data, technology, and insights, FiscalNote empowers customers with critical insights and the tools to turn them into action. Home to CQ, Dragonfly, Oxford Analytica, VoterVoice, and many other industry-leading brands, FiscalNote helps organizations stay ahead of political and business risk. To learn more about FiscalNote and its family of brands, visit FiscalNote.com and follow @FiscalNote.

VoterVoice

VoterVoice is the leading grassroots digital advocacy solution and the only platform using both AI and data science to engage advocates and move the needle on issues. It has been a finalist and winner of numerous awards for innovation, including for peer benchmark campaign data provided in the app. A highly flexible platform with many integrations and an open API, VoterVoice meets the needs of both small groups and large organizations with complex operations.

VoterVoice has an unmatched track record of accurately delivering messages to lawmakers. In 2023 alone, supporters of over 2,000 clients sent nearly 12.7 million messages to elected officials.

Learn how VoterVoice can help you make an impact at www.votervoice.net.  

Contributors

Data Science and Research

Sam North

Writing and Production

Veronica Magan

Lydia Stowe

Amelia Spalding

Product and Engineering

Paul Ellender

David Huang

Sam North

Design and Graphics

Whit Robinson

Sarah Yang

Zuma Hajiyeva