What callback rate should a voicemail campaign get?

There is no industry callback rate you can plan on. The figures published online measure different things: sales reps' cold voicemails, calls back to missed callers, or one vendor's customers. Measure your own instead: the number of people who called back, divided by the number of voicemails delivered.

For a sense of scale, here is what two real dealership campaigns sent through The Call Guy measured. About one in ten people who got one dealership's voicemails called back, and about one in six at a Ford store's private sale. They are two stores' results, not a promise.

What two real campaigns measured

Both sets were read from the campaigns' records: the dealership's on October 7, the private sale's on November 4. A missed voicemail returned its credit, so neither store paid for the voicemails that weren't delivered. Delivery itself runs at about 75%, measured across real campaigns.

How to count a callback rate

1. Count people, not calls. At the dealership, 93 calls came from 77 people. Some called twice. The rate is 77 people, not 93 calls.

2. Divide by delivered, not by the whole list. A voicemail that never reached an inbox can't be called back. At The Call Guy it doesn't spend a credit either. See Delivered, returned and to go.

3. Count calls to the number the voicemail showed. People call the number on their screen. A callback to your main line, or to a salesperson's cell, is real but uncounted, which is why a campaign gets its own line. See What the campaign line is.

4. Count text replies apart. A reply is a response too, from people who would rather type than call. A STOP is an opt-out, not a response: leave it out.

5. Use the same window every time. Pick how many days after a campaign you count, and keep it, so one campaign compares with the next.

Why published callback rates disagree

Search for a voicemail callback rate and you'll find figures from a few percent to over half. They don't measure the same thing:

• Cold sales voicemails left one at a time by reps, to people who have never heard of the business.

• Callback rates for missed calls, where a business calls back someone who rang it first.

• One vendor's customer base, with its own lists and its own definition of a response.

JustCall's 2026 voicemail statistics roundup says as much: no callback rate by industry is published with a consistent definition. A campaign to your own customers, about something they own, is a different thing from a cold voicemail. Compare each campaign with your own last one.

What moves the number

• Who is on the list. Your own customers, who agreed to hear from you, with a reason to hear from you now. A bought list is not a campaign: it is a consent problem. See How to get consent for voicemail and text campaigns in Canada.

• The reason. A recall on their model, a service that is due, a sale with a date. A message about them beats a message about you.

• Their name and their detail. The private sale's ten campaigns were each a message for each lead, with every customer's own details.

• The voice. Your voice or your team's, or a house voice. A voice the customer knows from the service drive or the showroom is a reason to listen.

• The script. Short, one reason, one ask. See How to write a voicemail drop script that gets callbacks.

• The follow-up text. At the dealership, 33 people replied by text: responses a voicemail alone would not have counted. See Voicemail drop or text message: which should a business send?.

• Someone answers. A callback is worth most in the minute it rings. At the dealership, 84 of the 93 calls were answered. Send when your team is there to pick up.

Do people still listen to voicemail?

Nobody can say how many voicemails are played. A carrier reports whether a voicemail reached an inbox, not whether anyone pressed play, so every figure about listening is a survey of what people say they do.

What a business can measure is what people did after. At the dealership, 77 people called back and 33 replied by text. At the private sale, 190 people called back. Each of them got the message and acted on it.

Common questions

What is a good callback rate for a voicemail drop?

There is no published rate that holds up, so compare each campaign with your own last one. For scale: in two real dealership campaigns, about one in ten people who got the voicemail called back at one store, and about one in six at another store's private sale. Those are two results, not a promise.

Should I count calls or callers?

Callers. One person who calls three times is one response. At the dealership above, 93 calls came from 77 people, and the rate is counted on the 77.

Why divide by delivered voicemails and not the whole list?

A voicemail that never reached an inbox can't be called back, so it says nothing about how the message worked. Delivery is its own number: about 75% at The Call Guy, measured across real campaigns, and 81% and 82% in the two sets above.

How do I know which campaign a callback came from?

Give each campaign a number of its own. At The Call Guy, the campaign line matches every call back to the campaign that reached the caller, and can send each callback to your CRM as a lead. See Callbacks.

Related

• Callbacks

• What does a voicemail drop cost?

• Voicemail campaigns for car dealerships

• How voicemail callbacks reach a dealership's CRM and BDC