FiscalNote’s data science team analyzed over 545 million email messages and more than 23 million text messages sent from our advocacy tools to build our 2025 Advocacy Benchmark Report, so we know a thing or two about successful advocacy campaigns.

Email campaigns are the #1 way that organizations find success in advocacy, and text messaging has seen a huge jump year over year — with the highest volume ever in 2025. That’s why here at VoterVoice, we’re constantly working to leverage data science to help you improve your advocacy results.

Data insights and benchmarking are essential tools in providing visibility into what’s working and what isn’t. Leveraged strategically, data can play a key role in improving performance, connecting supporters with their lawmakers, and fulfilling your mission.

It drives everything from helping you compose messages and increase open rates to delivering powerful insights when you’re reporting on results. Read on to learn how you can use data and VoterVoice metrics to maximize your impact.

Strategically Target Contacts

Knowing which topics each supporter is and isn’t interested in helps you target your messages to the right people.

VoterVoice takes care of this for you with our automatic topic tagging feature. Using AI, VoterVoice assigns the appropriate topic to each campaign, survey, petition, or event you launch from the platform. Then, when an advocate takes action on that topic, our intelligent technology tags that topic to the supporter so you know exactly what drove action.

Engage supporters more effectively simply by narrowing your recipient list to contacts with tags relevant to the campaign. By targeting the audiences most interested in the campaign topic, you’ll get a much higher open and action rate.

Cater to Short Attention Spans

Short, clear messaging works best, especially because audiences are on their phones more and more often. Here’s proof: almost half of all traffic arrived at our VoterVoice clients’ action centers via mobile devices in 2024.

Keep in mind, too, that many people receive upward of 100 emails per day, and it’s up to you to make your email stand out with a good subject line. Thankfully, there’s no need to comb through pages of email marketing reports to unearth tips and tricks. VoterVoice has built-in AI that guides you through the process of composing an effective email by highlighting best practices and offering suggestions in real time. These include recommendations on subject line and message length, phrases that trigger spam filters, and the number, type, and placement of links.

Communicate at Optimal Times

Did you know that advocacy emails have the highest open rate on Saturday at 7 a.m.? To maximize your impact, make sure you send messages at peak open and action times. This means not only monitoring which day of the week generates the best results but also which hour of the day sparks the most engagement from your advocates.

You can find this data in VoterVoice’s 2025 Advocacy Benchmark Report, which cross-compares campaign data from more than 2,000 advocacy organizations in 50 industries.

Not looking forward to sending a campaign blast on the weekend? Use VoterVoice’s email scheduling feature, which allows you to select in advance the day and hour that an email goes out.

Leverage Top Supporters

Passion drives action, and action drives change. Knowing which contacts take action most frequently means you can depend on them at critical times. Rather than manually track supporter activity, rely on VoterVoice Insights, which not only produces a list of supporters who frequently take action but tells you who clicked on which links in email broadcasts.

VoterVoice helps you identify important contacts, too. Knowing which of your supporters are “grasstops” supporters (have close connections to elected officials) gives you an advantage when sharing your message at key moments. VoterVoice has built-in features that allow you to identify and segment out grasstops supporters so you know whom to ask for ultra-personalized outreach to lawmakers when needed.

Benchmark Your Engagement

VoterVoice is the only advocacy tool that uses data science not only for reporting but also to help you maximize the number of supporters who take action.

You must monitor campaign success so that you know when to adjust messaging or double down on outreach. VoterVoice Insights provides a broad summary of your advocacy efforts over time by looking at every advocacy action type (campaigns, petitions, surveys, and events). Easily track the growth of your base of advocates without running complex searches, and quickly understand if your overall action rate is increasing or declining.

You can also see how your emails and text messages measure up to outreach focused on similar themes. VoterVoice Insights provides industry comparison data for open, action, unsubscribe, and message failure rates for emails and click, action, and failure rates for text messages.

If you’re looking for a broader picture, see how your broadcast performance compares to overall advocacy email performance rates in the 2025 Advocacy Benchmark Report.

Follow Up

Busy schedules and crowded inboxes mean that messages are quickly forgotten. If your message has a call to action, don’t be afraid to follow up with a second communication to advocates who didn’t act.

VoterVoice reports are prescriptive, not just descriptive, with prompts that use data science to notify you in real time when your open or action rates are below average — and then remind you to follow up. You can use the Track & Resend feature to identify message recipients who didn’t take action and automatically contact them a second time.

You can also vary your outreach method. If you initially sent an email, try sending a text message next. Text messages have higher open rates than emails, so while you can include less information, your chances of getting your audience’s attention are stronger. You can use VoterVoice both to send a mass email and a mass text.

Track Social Media Shares

People of like-minded interests tend to run in the same circles. Encouraging advocates to share your campaign helps expand your reach and garner additional support.

Keep an eye on how often advocates promote your cause with VoterVoice’s social sharing tracker. Not only does it tell you how often advocates post about your campaign after taking action and on which social channels, but it also shows you how often other people took action via those posts.

Remember, the most important thing is not activity or even engagement; the most important thing is action. The social sharing tracker measures your impact (as do all VoterVoice reporting tools).

A Complete Advocacy Solution

The only data-led advocacy solution, VoterVoice uses AI and data science to help you drive engagement and, ultimately, action. Whether you’re looking to educate supporters, survey their interests, or make an impact on legislation, VoterVoice can help. See for yourself: Request a demo today.