My 3 Advocacy Takeaways from the new M+R Benchmarks Report

Did you read M+R’s recently released 2025 Benchmarks Report? Don’t worry, I’m here for you. Let me share my three biggest takeaways for advocacy teams.

#1: Email engagement is getting harder

For advocacy emails, there was an average drop in clickthrough rate (-10%) and response rate (-13%) last year, while the unsubscribe rate increased (+3%). Don’t let this be an excuse, though. Strong, well-planned narratives are highly effective and will increase the performance of your messages. (That’s what my clients are seeing in their data.) M+R’s benchmark click rate was 2.1% and response rate was 1.82%.

#2: SMS continues to outperform email

Do you text action opportunities to your volunteers or members? If you have the budget, then you should strongly consider it. The clickthrough rate on text messages was 4.8% and the response rate was 3.9%, double the rates for email. 

#3: List churn is real and must be accounted for

The report showed an overall list churn rate of 15%. This means that if you have a list of 35,000 advocates, you’re going to lose 5,250 of them each year. So, if you’re not recruiting at least that many new advocates this year, your list is shrinking. 

An Important Reminder About Benchmarking

Every organization’s list behaves differently. I tell organizations to focus on benchmarking against themselves rather than worry about how they stack up against wide-ranging reports. If you can increase your own list’s performance year over year, then you’re on the right track.

That being said, if you feel like your advocacy email program is falling behind or growing stale, let’s talk. Oftentimes, there are easy yet fundamental changes we can make to dramatically improve the performance of your email program and drive more actions in your legislative campaigns. Don’t hesitate to reach out if I can be of any help.