How important is it to write a good online dating first email? The answer to that may seem obvious, but just in case it isn’t let me say: writing a great first message in online dating is critical to success or failure in your dating life. As I discuss in my free online dating guide, successful online dating relies in part on making great first impressions. Whether the first impression is in the photos you select for http://hookupdate.net/es/illicit-encounters-opinion/ your profile, how you describe yourself, or the first email you write, taking time to make the best first impression is important.
For this discussion email refers to your first message in online dating. This will include whatever method the service you are using allows you to write a message to another member. It is also worth noting that most often discuss this from the point of view of a man contacting a woman, since that was my experience, but my hope is that the thoughts here are helpful to anyone.
This discussion is primarily for sites such as Match where you write the online dating first message yourself (see more on how match works if you’re not familiar with what I’m referring to). This advice may still be helpful for sites such as eHarmony or Chemistry, however these services guide the communication and there is less “emailing” early on.
Writing the online dating first email is the area where I made the biggest mistakes for the longest period of time when I was dating online. I would write overly long and, in my head, witty emails that very rarely received responses. Once, I wrote no less than two pages based on a girl’s heading to her profile. The HEADING! I thought I was making conversation but all I was making was a girl scared. I really did mean well. I just didn’t know what I was doing.
Writing a Better First Email
My rule here is very simple: keep your first email very short. Give anything longer than three sentences a good, hard look before sending. There are several reasons I’m for short first emails.
- Your profile is what you use to sell yourself, not your first email. While I feel that your profile should be a constant battle between brevity and substance, it should definitely hold enough for someone to make a decision about communicating with you. If it doesn’t, don’t try and fix it in your emails: go back to your profile and improve that first. The email should be the bait to get someone to view your profile.
- If they don’t like your profile, long-winded emails are wasting your time.
- You have to keep your weird factor low. Never forget that you are working against the bad impressions created by every weird person who has come before you (or even the good intentioned people who just come off odd like I used to!).
- Short emails can come off as confident. Worded wrongly they can come off as cocky but even that is more acceptable than crazy/weird.
With online dating, the first message can make or break your chances of a successful first date. Based on my experience, I think the above are good guidelines to improve your odds of getting the conversation going.
Okay…So What Should I Include?
So what do you include in this short, introductory email? As I’ve said, in online dating a first message can have a huge affect, but what helps the most? Here’s my short 4-point list of easy to follow ideas: