The story of 2025 is a tension between scale and responsiveness. Advocacy teams pushed harder across every channel, with email volume up 15% year over year and text volume up nearly 42%.

At the same time, engagement softened. Open rates and action rates both slipped, even as unsubscribe rates held flat and deliverability improved. Audiences are still reachable and still on the list; they have simply grown more selective about which messages earn their attention.

That combination matters because weaker engagement did not come with weaker deliverability. Deliverability climbed nearly half a percentage point, from 98.34% in 2024 to 98.79% in 2025. With messages landing and engagement still falling, technical factors stop being a credible explanation. What is left is harder to dismiss: content strategy, audience targeting, and message discipline now carry the weight.

Total communications volume grew decisively in 2025. Email send volume increased by nearly 50 million messages, while text volume increased by more than 5.2 million messages, making SMS the fastest-growing channel in the dataset.

This rise in output shows that organizations are continuing to invest in direct supporter communication. It also suggests that many teams are responding to faster-moving issue environments with more frequent outreach rather than narrower, more selective campaigns.

On its own, however, greater volume tells only half the story. To understand whether that growth translated into stronger advocacy performance, the next step is to look at what happened inside the inbox.

Email remained the core advocacy channel in 2025, but it became harder to generate engagement at 2024 levels. Average open rate declined by 10% year over year, falling from 39.34% to 35.41%, while average action rate fell 7.5%.

Those declines do not mean email stopped working. A 35.41% open rate is still substantial, and a 6.33% action rate means email remains a serious mobilization tool.

What changed is the level of effort required to sustain performance. In a more crowded environment, teams can no longer count on volume or routine sends to carry results; stronger targeting, clearer message hierarchy, and more compelling asks matter more than they did a year ago.

Informational versus call-to-action emails

The 2025 email mix helps explain why growing output did not produce stronger mobilization. In the Votervoice platform, there are two types of emails you can send:

• Call to Action Email — An email that asks the recipient to do something: sign a petition, email a lawmaker, share a post.
• Informational — An email with no ask, such as a newsletter or program update.

Informational emails accounted for 282,410,819 messages, or 74.1% of total email volume, while call-to-action emails accounted for 98,485,819 messages, or 25.9%.

Informational messages also opened better than call-to-action emails. In 2025, informational emails posted a 37.29% open rate compared with 32.65% for call-to-action emails.

That split reveals a structural imbalance. Many programs appear to be stronger at maintaining awareness than at driving action, especially when the smaller share of messages carrying an explicit ask also faces the steeper engagement challenge.

This does not argue for reducing informational content indiscriminately. Informational sends play an important role in educating and warming audiences, but they produce the greatest value when they clearly build toward a more focused action moment rather than functioning as an end in themselves.

Best time to send emails

Timing patterns remained consistent across both years. January delivered the highest open rates in 2024 and 2025, Friday was the strongest day in both years, and the top-performing send window stayed in the early‑to‑mid afternoon, nudging from 3:00 PM in 2024 to 4:00 PM in 2025.

This consistency shows that send‑time optimization still matters, but only at the margins. Well‑timed messages outperform poorly timed ones, yet timing cannot compensate for weak targeting, low issue salience, or message fatigue; it works best as an amplifier of good strategy, not a substitute for it.

Text messaging expanded rapidly in 2025, but its results were mixed. Total text volume rose 41.8% year over year, and text open rate improved from 6.16% to 7.85%, yet text action rate fell from 1.38% to 1.14%.

That pattern suggests that organizations are scaling SMS successfully as a reach channel, but not always using it in ways that produce stronger conversion. More texts are being seen, but not necessarily turned into more action.

The strategic lesson is similar to the one found in email, though the channel dynamics differ. Text works best when it is used with clarity and urgency, especially for reminders, rapid response, and targeted follow-up, rather than as a simple high-volume extension of email.

Text messaging expanded rapidly in 2025, but its results were mixed. Total text volume rose 41.8% year over year, and text open rate improved from 6.16% to 7.85%, yet text action rate fell from 1.38% to 1.14%.

That pattern suggests that organizations are scaling SMS successfully as a reach channel, but not always using it in ways that produce stronger conversion. More texts are being seen, but not necessarily turned into more action.

Sector-level results in 2025 show a wide spread in both attention and mobilization. Some sectors consistently beat the overall email benchmark of roughly mid-30s open and mid-single-digit action rates, while others open strongly but struggle to convert, or reach large audiences with more modest response. The highlights below call out where performance is strongest, where there is clear room to improve, and what that implies for advocacy strategy in each space.

Select your sector below to see open, action, and unsubscribe rates and how they compare against the 2025 benchmarks. 

Sector-specific findings

Clergy & Religious Organizations

The top performer in 2025, with the highest action rate of any credible sector and an above-benchmark open rate on a solid message base. Strong at both opening and acting, this segment shows what happens when urgency and moral clarity meet a committed audience.

Ideological / Single-Issue

Second-highest action rate on the largest message base in the set. Open rates are lower than average, but the people who do open act at a very high rate, suggesting a smaller but intensely motivated core.

Labor

Highest open rate among the credible sectors, though on a smaller volume base. Engagement is especially strong at the top of the funnel, with opens well above benchmark and an action rate that sits closer to the middle of the pack.

Infrastructure

Above-benchmark open rate paired with a mid-range action rate. This is a steady, broad-reach performer: campaigns reach large audiences reliably, even if conversion to action is more modest.

Health

The widest client base in the set. Open rate sits near the overall benchmark, while action rate lands below it, which is typical of a large and varied sector that must speak to many different audience segments at once.

Non-Profit Institutions

High open rate but the lowest action rate among credible sectors. Supporters open readily but are less likely to convert, pointing to opportunities to sharpen calls to action and be more explicit about impact.

Remaining credible sectors

The remaining credible sectors (Other, Agribusiness, Energy & Natural Resources, Education, Finance/Insurance/Real Estate, and Misc Business) cluster below the benchmark on action rate, with open rates ranging from the high 20s to low 40s. For these groups, the primary gap is not getting into the inbox but turning attention into action.

From 2024 to 2025, clients sent more email and text, but average open and action rates fell. In the first half of 2026 (H1), the reverse is also true: programs are sending fewer messages, and performance has softened further. Volume changes in either direction, on their own, have not been enough to overcome a tougher engagement environment.

The data points to a simple conclusion: list quality, issue salience, segmentation, and message design matter more than how many messages go out. Teams that want to reverse the 2026 dip will need to change who they talk to and how, not just how often.

The last 6 months make one thing clear: simply sending more, or less, email and text is not enough to lift engagement. To reverse the early-2026 dip, advocacy teams need sharper lists, clearer stories, and more intentional use of each channel. This playbook outlines practical steps to take in the second half (H2) of 2026.

Fix the list before the subject line

• Identify your core “always mobilize” segment and protect it from over-mailing.
• Suppress chronically unengaged names from high-frequency sends; test win-back or sunset campaigns instead.
• Tighten targeting for big pushes: send broad informational updates, but reserve hard CTAs for people who have acted recently.

Rebalance informational vs call-to-action email

• If three-quarters of volume is informational, audit what actually earns a CTA and what should just be a brief update.
• Make each CTA email carry a single, explicit ask at the top, not three soft requests buried in copy.
• Use informational sends to build narrative and context; use CTA sends sparingly to cash in the urgency you’ve built.

Use text where it works best

• Treat SMS as a precision tool for urgency and follow-through, not as another newsletter channel.
• Pair texts with your highest-stakes campaigns and your most committed advocates, not your entire list.
• Test sequences: email for depth and context, text for reminders, deadlines, and “last chance to act.”

Design for a tougher inbox

• Assume audiences are more distracted in 2026 than in 2024 and 2025. Shorten subject lines and preheaders; front-load the issue and the verb.
• Make messages scannable: 1 to 2 key paragraphs, bullets, and a highly visible primary button or link.
• Re-test send times and days based on your own benchmarks, not just generic marketing lore.

Measure like it’s 2026, not 2016

• Track action rate by segment and by message type (informational vs CTA), not just overall.
• Watch unsubscribes and complaint signals as “cost” per send, not just as a side metric.
• Build one or two simple internal benchmarks: “What is good for us now?” and compare new campaigns to that, not to the all-client average.

• Sources. Full-year figures (2016 to 2025) come from the full benchmark pull. H1 2025 and H1 2026 figures come from the two half-year pulls; each pull’s current-year row is a true six-month figure, verified against volume (H1 2025 email was 216.5M against a full-year 380.9M).
• Best time of day. For each hour, open rate is weighed against that hour’s share of annual send volume. Only hours with at least 3% of volume are eligible, so a high open rate on a near-empty hour (for example 4:00 AM, under 0.1% of volume) is excluded. Day-of-week open rate is volume-weighted across hours.
• Sector credibility filter. A sector is reported only if it has at least 1 million messages and 10 or more clients in 2025. This drops 6 of 18 sectors. The 2025 sector block was verified against the known 2025 totals (380,896,638 messages, 21,471 broadcasts).
• What a broadcast is. A broadcast is one send event, averaging roughly 17,700 recipients in 2025. Broadcast counts and email counts measure different things and are reported as separate lines, not summed into one message total.
• Action rate. Applies to call-to-action emails only. Informational emails have no action rate.
• Excluded data. A second, unlabeled industry-level block in the source file did not reconcile to any known year (its overall open rate was about 22% against a true 2025 rate of 35.4%), so industry-level 2025 figures were not used. Sector-level 2025 data, which reconciles cleanly, is used instead.
• Open rate averaging. The overall open rate is an unweighted average across broadcasts, while the informational and call-to-action open rates are weighted by message volume. Because the two use different weighting, the by-type rates (37.29% and 32.65%) do not average back to the overall 35.41%.

VoterVoice helps thousands of associations, corporations, and nonprofits mobilize supporters, engage lawmakers, and turn grassroots energy into measurable impact. As part of the PolicyNote policy intelligence suite, VoterVoice works alongside PolicyNote to give government affairs and advocacy teams a complete solution for driving action. PolicyNote tracks the legislation affecting priorities. VoterVoice amplifies the voices that can shape it.

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.

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