Before I searched for prisoners, using the Advanced Search, state-by-state, I priorized looking for profiles not receiving any letter, and that would soon expire. I selected the best profiles that had those 2 characteristics, and sent letters to them.
How much % of "not receiving mail" replied to your initial contact? I would like to be able to compare results of different users, so to know better if that's a good strategy or not. Please consider that I live overseas, and this could probably impact the reply % we get.
Last post
So far out of 5 letters sent to the "inmates not receiving mail" section, I've received 2 replies in about a month's time.
This month I've sent another 5 letters out, but so far it's only been a couple of days since letter have been mailed, will keep an update.
I've also reached out to the profiles who haven't replied via snail mail through jpay and connectnetwork to see if the mail was recieved in the first place.
So, 40% reply rate.
I guess you live in USA, as you considered just 1 month is enough to wait. If you lived overseas, it couldn't be less than 2 months.
Anderson, I'm living outside the US, too, and 4 weeks is completekly average, if nort for transfer, shutdown or holiday season (aka. Christmas).
6 out of 6, but then again, I'm writing to guys.
Writing to guys...
Do you believe that the inmate sex impacts the reply rate? Surely there are far more male profiles, than female ones. But I don't know if there are more males or females wanting to connect to prisoners, so I don't know if there are more male or female prisoners really needing penpals. There are more males on the "needs mail", but this feature isn't very accurate anyways.
I'm contacting mainly females. Beware, I said mainly females, not manly females.
Just a quick update, I reached out to the inmates who didn't reply through snail mail on Jpay and GTL, it seems only 2 of the paper letters made it to their destination, I received word back next day, so currently 5 out of 5 correspondences started with inmates not receiving mail, but there's no telling how long any will continue to write
I had pretty good luck with it. I think I only wrote two women off that list. Kara wrote me back once, but never responded to my second letter and then passed my address off to another inmate.
Linda wrote me back, and we corresponded regularly until she got out of prison in October, and we continue to be in each other's lives now. I spoke at length about that here.
Wait, let me understand better...
You contacted 5 inmates by snail mail; 2 of them replied by snail mail. OK.
Then you contacted the other 3 by electronic means, and all 3 replied saying they didn't receive anything?
Have I understood correctly?
[QUOTE]Do you believe that the inmate sex impacts the reply rate?[/QUOTE]
Yes, I do believe this, as there are less women incarcerated than men and these women do - in relation to the numbers- get more mail.
yep, that is correct