When the Campaign to Reform Immigration For America (RI4A) was born on June 1, 2008, the organization did not have a single name on its list of supporters’ emails. Within a month, Salsa helped that list shoot up to 35,000 supporters’ emails, and RI4A now boasted an additional 47,000 contacts on its cell phone action network. Today, The Campaign to Reform Immigration For America is a powerful force for Immigration reform nationwide.

Starting off with a Bang

As a new organization without a single name on its email list, Reform Immigration for America faced a serious challenge. Their opposition boasted an impressive email list of an estimated 1.4 million supporters, and had effectively lobbied Congress against passing comprehensive immigration reform the last time it was up for consideration, in 2007. Within only two days of launching, however, RI4A had generated so many calls and faxes to Congress and the White House that the opposition was sending out “RED ALERT!” emails to their members about the new and growing threat that RI4A presented online…and RI4A was just getting started.

RI4A Gets Going with Salsa

Using Salsa’s API, RI4A created a “Fax Congress” email alert. But with no email addresses on their contact list, RI4A needed help getting their message out. By simply utilizing Microsoft Word and Entourage Mail Merge, RI4A was able to send out personalized messages to 300 organizations that shared RI4A’s vision of immigration reform, asking them to send the action alert out to their supporters on June 3rd. Eighty partner organizations complied, generating over 12,500 new sign-ups for RI4A. As promised, RI4A shared these new sign-ups with the partner organizations that had generated them, yielding a shared benefit for all involved.

The email message soon went viral, shooting out all over the nation. This viral campaign swiftly brought in another 12,500 sign-ups, with each new supporter sending faxes to their Senators and Representatives. Moreover, the action alert allowed the supporters to send 8 faxes simultaneously, targeting their two Senators, one Representative, and the leadership all at the same time. Through this clever use of targeting, RI4A generated over 100,000 faxes to Congress by only the end of their first week, and a total of 200,000 by the end of their campaign.

The “Fax Congress” form RI4A sent out also included a request for supporters’ cell numbers, which were added to RI4A’s cell phone action network. New RI4A supporters placed roughly 2,500 calls to Congress as part of the campaign, and RI4A was able to add over 5,000 new supporters to its mobile contact list.

Rosalyn Lemieux, who worked on this campaign for RI4A, notes that “the mobile list is exponentially better at generating calls than email.” The call-in campaign also went viral, bringing RI4A’s mobile list to over 30,000 names—a number that has only continued to grow. Capitalizing on this, the next action alert that RI4A sent out generated over 25,000 calls to the White House.

Salsa Makes RI4A a Force to be Reckoned With

In just a few days, Salsa Labs helped RI4A grow its supporter base into the thousands, and to make such an impact on Congress that groups opposing RI4A sent frightened emails to their supporters. Through partner outreach, email blasts, and viral campaigns, RI4A has quickly grown into an important advocate for immigration reform.