In the middle of a busy and critical legislative session, email advocacy campaigns are the go-to for hot button issues that warrant public attention at the local, state, and federal level. Inboxes are flooded, emails are left unread, and important messages are buried by the minute. Action alerts, constituent outreach, and digital advocacy are growing more popular by the day but with an inbox overflow, how can your calls to action stand out? Times are changing and so should your advocacy campaigns. If you want to keep up with fast-moving technological changes and bypass the email backlog, you need to utilize the platform that is at everyone’s fingertips (literally).
Here’s why text messages work: immediacy, reach and conversion, and personability.
Immediacy
Text messages offer instantaneous delivery and demand immediate attention. The average person reads an incoming text message within 90 seconds while emails can take over 90 minutes just to be opened. Text messages have an open rate of about 98%, making texting the ideal campaign method for time-sensitive “asks” like action alerts or voting reminders. This rapid mobilization can be essential during key legislative windows or breaking news. Unlike email, texts rarely face spam filters and the ease of peer-to-peer forwarding amplifies the reach of a single message.
Reach and Conversion
The reach of text messages is expansive and growing. The rate of conversion is drastically higher with text messages vs. email. We put this to the test with one of our clients in healthcare. After sending out a text message activation involving tax credits, we saw a 9.25% conversion rate on the mobile message versus a 2.50% conversion rate on email.
A client in the insurance space used texting as an awareness tool, looking to “click rate” as the main measurement metric. On three of five texts to advocates in Delaware, 50% or more clicked the link included in the text message, a rate significantly higher than would come from an email send. On a large send out across the country, about 15% of text recipients clicked on the included link which beats out the average click rate for a mass email sent by a longshot. According to Quorum, text messages drastically outperform emails in click-through rates. SMS campaigns typically yield a click rate of 15% to 35%, whereas advocacy emails average just 2% to 4%
Personability
At Beekeeper Group, we care about meaningful action and inspired change. What better way to inspire people than a personal message? Texting brings personability to a campaign and feels direct and one-to-one, even on a large scale. Text campaigns are inherently effective because they exist in the same private space where people talk to family and friends.That sense of intimacy drives engagement in a way that broadcast channels like social media, mass emails, or display ads don’t. This direct connection makes SMS activations feel uniquely personal. People want to take action when they feel like their voice matters and texting tells them that they are being heard, they are needed, and they are valued.
Now more than ever, we are encouraging our clients to lean into text campaigns and peer to peer outreach. With the federal session and several state legislative sessions still going strong, we aim to prioritize clear, consistent, and effective messaging. The data is clear: with texting, the path is simpler, the reach is larger, and the conversion rate is higher.