Online Dating – How To Get Your First Email Opened
Posted Under: Dating for Men and Women,Online Dating
All right, you’ve plunged into the world of online dating, checked out a few profiles and found someone who piqued your interest. Now it’s time to initiate contact and see if you can develop a relationship with them. Watch out, though, because you can blow it if you fail to take advantage of the opportunity that’s open to you.
Your first e-mail is crucial. It can reveal your intentions, your personality and even your intelligence level, and what you say will largely determine whether you receive a response or not.
Undoubtedly, the person you are writing to gets a lot of e-mail, so how can you increase your Chances of getting a response? there are several things you can do to tilt the odds in your favor.
First of all, you should have a clear understanding of what such initial e-mails usually entail. Too often, people who make contact don’t bother to write out a thoughtful, well constructed message. Rather, their attempts often come across as looking like spam!
Therefore, anything you can do to make your message look like it came from a real live person and catch the recipient’s interest will be to your advantage.
We live in an age of “txt spk,” but some kinds of messages require more formal writing than others. If you are past a certain age or are trying to impress people with your intelligence, you should probably watch your spelling and grammar and avoid the text speak.
Secondly, you can greatly increase your chances of a response by making your message personal. By that I mean show the recipient that you actually read their profile. Comment on it. Considering the type of message the recipient usually receives, a thoughtful message will probably put you at the head of the pack.
Just as in life, people online are more attracted to those who listen to them and make an effort to understand their interests. Therefore, you should always read somebody’s profile before sending them an e-mail.
There are two very good reasons for this. First, you will probably make a better impression on the recipient by making reference to some of their interests; and secondly, by more carefully reading a person’s profile, you can better decide if you even want to send them an email. You don’t want to send a letter based solely on physical appearance and then discover after the fact that the recipient is the polar opposite of yourself.
Talk about some of the things you enjoy doing and make a point of noting similar interests the two of you share. If you have a profile yourself, it’s not a bad idea to include a link to it so that they can peruse it at their leisure to find out more about you. If you don’t have a picture on your profile (although you should), you will probably want to refrain from including one with your message, since this can seem a bit presumptuous.
Following these steps will remove some of the ambiguity from the process. Remember that the recipient is essentially being contacted by a stranger, so anything you can do to make your message more personal will greatly increase its effectiveness.
