J Street is the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. It was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israel conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. Using Salsa, it took J Street only a year to build a supporter base over 100,000 people strong.

Background

As a new organization, J Street needed to build a supporter base. Using Salsa, J Street grew their list to 100,000 supporters using Salsa in just 12 months.

PACKAGE PROFILE: Supporter Management

At the core of J Street's success was Salsa's Supporter Management package. This multi-purpose package is great for creating many kinds of e-advocacy pages — like online petitions, write-your-rep pages and media campaigns. Use the actions tool almost any time you want your supporters to "get involved" with an online action and grow or update your list with supporter contact information.

J Street Packed With Supporters

As a new organization, J Street needed to collect names and build a solid base of committed supporters. Using Salsa Petitions, J Street collected 20,000 signatures and massively expanded their list within 24 hours. When Sarah Palin was invited to speak at a nonpartisan rally on the Jewish community's response to terrorism and the Iranian nuclear program, J Street launched a rapid response campaign to mobilize their supporters against her participation in the rally. With the help of the Salsa Actions tool, J Street circulated a petition to their supporters and allies, requesting that Sarah Palin be replaced with someone more aligned with the views of the American Jewish community. Within 24 hours, J Street collected and sent 20,000 signatures in support of their petition to the event organizers.The petition conveyed such overwhelming opposition that the event organizers were forced to replace Palin with a more appropriate rally speaker. From the 20,000 people who signed their petition, J Street added an additional 14,000 supporters to their list.

• Reaching the media with their action was critical for their campaign success; Salsa Action tools enabled J Street to jump on the media momentum of the 2008 presidential campaign season by quickly creating a online petition and mobilizing their supporters to engage in the online action
• The narrative of the online action fed into the media coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaigns, which was a nightly issue that attracted and held everyone's attention
• Having an integrated media strategy and good relationships with key bloggers allowed the story to spread quckly to a wide audience.

PACKAGE PROFILE: Tell-a-Friend

This tool allow your supporters to spread your message via email by providing a simple form that allows them to input email addresses, and send either their own, or a predefined message to those recipients.

Always include tell a friend messages in email triggers:
Most of J Street's list growth was viral. They strategically used petitions to simultaneously get their message out and sign up new supporters of their cause. Knowing that people were more likely to respond to a personal request from their friend to get involved with the action, J Street integrated Salsa's email trigger and tell-a-friend functions with their online petition. With Salsa, every time one of J Street's supporters signed a petition, they would receive an email thanking them and an ask to send the petition to a friend.

It's Automatic: Email Triggers Save You Time

Salsa's Auto-Responses — also called "Triggers" — are e-mails launched when someone takes an action on one of your Salsa pages. They're most typically used after someone places a donation or takes an action.

Learn From J Street's Success

So how does a group go from 1 supporter to 100,000 supporters?  J Street attributes some of their success to forming strategic partnerships with organizations that have a larger list of supporters. They worked with key partners such as MoveOn.org and Democrats for America who joined their petition campaigns and sent out J Street's online actions to their lists. Simply asking people who are signing your petition if they want to receive communications from your group gives your group the opportunity to grow your list of supporters by significant margins. Once you get beyond 15-20,000 supporters, J Street notes, you gain access to a whole new set networks, and your list can grow exponentially.
Hire an Online Director:
For J Street, hiring someone who knew how to leverage online support was a key part of growing their list so they could flex their political muscle. Having a large supporter list was also critical, as it allowed them to challenge the other organizations in their space who weren't offering the same progressive policies J Street offers.