SMI #009: Teach Prisoners Account Based Marketing
Increase prison literacy and create job opportunities through hand written notes
Opportunity in a Tweet:
Prisoners have limited job opportunities post-incarceration, despite having lots of downtime to learn a new skill. Also, email is becoming an oversaturated, impersonalized way to connect with customers. Prisoners could be contracted to write handwritten notes to drive customer retention.
What This Is:
A way to improve literacy amongst the incarcerated while learning basic copy writing, marketing and customer service skills
A new and cost effective marketing / customer service channel for companies to tap into
A social good program to increase company morale
What This Isn’t:
Exploitation of labor - prisoners would earn money for each note they write, which they can send home to their families
Free - prisoners would be given the max pay per unit the system allows for
A substitution for higher level marketing tasks - this would be copy and paste type simple
Thesis:
Prison systems are terrible at training people for reentry to society
Can learn to cut hair, but can’t become a licensed barber
Can fight fires, but can’t become a firefighter
Can make license plates…but only prisons make license plates
Takeaway: The skills pay the bills, so give people skills if you don’t want them coming back
Handwritten notes are a lost art…except in prison
The only place it’s still cool to have a pen pal is in jail
Takeaway: The texting game is not strong at Riker’s Island, but cursive is all the rage
Taking time to hand write notes is too menial of a task for marketing teams
No software or medical device company is going to pay a salaried employee to write hand written notes
Takeaway: The unit economics of this work, unlike in the real world, where it’s too time consuming
Back of the Napkin Market Sizing
To Get the Ball Rolling, Sisyphus Says
Perfect a specific marketing motion for a specific industry (example: annual conference invites for software companies)
Look to roll it out with just one state prison system at a time due to the approvals and bureaucracy you’ll have to jump though
Keep the initial quantity of jobs limited so they are coveted and respected roles within the prison system; scarcity will give the program traction internally
Kinda Biased Competitive Landscape
How It Makes Money
Waves This Rides
ESG Programs (environmental, social, and governance)
Similar to buying carbon offsets (which, if you didn’t know, is a privileged thing well funded companies do to feel less bad about taking private jets), or planting trees in the Amazon (which Big Pharma does after dumping sludge in the Chahles Rivah), companies are looking for ways to signal social good with their wallets
Prisoner skill share programs
Prisoners are learning to code in San Quenton
Future Expansion Areas
Audio / video transcription services by prisoners (when software programs don’t do the trick)
Voice overs for freelance cartoon artists (all they’d need is a microphone)
Any other Upwork type task that can be done between four walls with limited technology
Why This Might Fail
Prison systems don’t want to play ball
Prisons would have to opt in and let prisoners get paid, and they’re notoriously cheap (like, 20 cents an hour cheap)
Customers may be weary of recipients discovering that a prisoner wrote it
Potential for customers to come across as disingenuous / that they lied
Would need to ensure the origin of the letter is not disclosed
Spelling Errors / Hidden Messages / Offensive Symbolism
Potentially Reliable Stuff I Read at 3 AM
Completely Irrelevant Post Script No Reputable Business Publication Would Allow
Get Hyped
Get Loud
Get Wise
“We’re cursed because we know the numbers.”
-Sam Zell