We all know the feeling. You’ve been on a dating app for a while, you’ve seen some friendly faces come through, and then boom…you see someone amazing. You’re excited as you start to daydream about the possibilities. But then it hits you. What on Earth am I going to say to this person? How do I send the perfect first message to get them as excited as I am and ensure a response?

Today, that’s what we’re going to look at. We’ll talk about the do’s and don’ts of sending a great first message when dating online. We’ll also talk realistic expectations to make sure you’re setting yourself up for success and not heartache.

The Reality of Online Dating Messaging You Have to Understand First

Before we dive headfirst into sending the perfect first message (with the exact steps to follow), there’s a quick disclaimer you have to understand.

Even if you send the greatest first message of all time, there is a high probability that you won’t get a response back.

Why? Well, there are a few reasons.

Some Dating Apps Make it Challenging

First, some dating apps don’t make it easy. As you know, dating apps have to make some money in order to offer you a safe and helpful experience. Free dating apps are almost never a great experience. Because of this, they typically require some sort of premium subscription to send messages. Based on statistics, somewhere between 5% and 10% of users are premium at any time (about 1 in 20 or 1 in 10).

For many dating apps, only premium members are able to send or respond to messages. This means that if you’re a premium member and you send out 10 messages, at best, only 1 of those people you messaged even has the ability to respond. If 90% of the people you message are interested but the one who isn’t happens to be the one with premium, you may get no response.

This is why it’s incredibly important that you set your expectations properly. If you’re hearing back on 1 in 8 or 1 in 10 messages, that’s actually pretty good.

The other options is you can make sure you’re using a dating app that lets anyone (regardless of account level) respond to messages. In the secular space there are a few options like this if you look hard enough. In the faith-based space, we’d highly encourage you to check out Higher Bond.

Higher Bond is a Christian dating app that allows all members to respond to messages whether they’ve paid for a membership or not. This means everyone you send a message to has the opportunity to respond.

If you’re looking for a Christian dating app that makes this easy, we’d encourage you to check out Higher Bond.

People Just Don’t Respond

The second reason you may not get responses is that people just aren’t the best at responding. Think about how many friends you have that you text that don’t get back to you. Think about how many people you might email with work who never get back to you. If people that know you already aren’t always the best about responding, strangers will rarely be better at it.

Additionally, we try and encourage people to send a response message when they’re not interested to at least say thanks but no thank you. The reality? Most people don’t.

None of these things are shared to discourage you! We just want you to approach online dating and messaging your matches with a realistic mindset.

What You Should NOT Do With Your First Message

To start, let’s run through a quick list of the things you should never do when sending your first message on a dating app. Arguably, these are more important than what you actually say because even the worst of first messages that doesn’t do these things can still have success.

Let’s get into it.

• Do not send cookie cutter messages. – Each message needs to have some personalization for the person you’re sending it to.
• Don’t just send ‘hey’. – If you don’t put some effort into your first message, you can’t expect a response.
• Don’t send a novel. – On the flip side, putting too much effort into a first message can come across as overwhelming to someone who doesn’t know you yet.
• Don’t be rude. – This may sound like a no-brainer, but there are some people out there advising people to use rudeness as a way to get attention. This is never a good idea.
• Don’t take high risk, low reward routes. – If something could be misinterpreted, don’t take the risk. For example, if you have a joke you want to send that might not come across as a joke (but instead would seem weird), save it for a later message or an in-person conversation. It would be a high risk that they never respond and low reward over just sending a normal first message.
• Don’t lie. – It would hopefully go without saying that you shouldn’t lie in a first message, but it does not. Making something up or exaggerating just to get a conversation started is always an awful strategy (even if it happens to work in getting more responses).

Here’s How to Send the Perfect First Messages

Now that we’ve gotten all the ‘paperwork’ out of the way, let’s talk about how to send the perfect first message.

We’re going to do this as a fill-in-the-blank formula to make it easy.

Do you have to follow this? Of course not. Can you do your own thing? Of course. Our goal here, though, is to give you something that works for the widest percentage of people and can be replicated.

Here’s the formula.

[Greeting] + [User’s First Name]! I saw [thing you saw on their profile]. [Statement that connects that thing to you]. [Open-ended question about that thing]?

If you’re confused, don’t worry. This is super simple.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say you see someone named Sarah that you’re interested in. You see on Sarah’s profile that she’s a nurse and your mom was a nurse too. Here’s what you might send to Sarah.

“Hi Sarah! I saw on your profile you’re a nurse. My mom was actually a nurse too! What’s your favorite part about the job?”

• Greeting = I
• User’s First Name = Sarah
• Thing you saw on their profile = I saw on your profile you’re a nurse.
• Statement that connects that thing to you = My mom was actually a nurse too!
• Open-ended question about that thing = What’s your favorite part about the job?

That’s it! You can literally replicate this for any person you want to message, and it works great. Why does it work? Here are a few reasons:

• It’s simple. It’s not too much effort, but it’s enough effort.
• It shows you read their profile because you’re referencing something from it.
• It starts to build connection because you’re tying something about them to you.
• It shows genuine curiosity with a question.
• The question at the end gives them an easy way to respond to start a conversation.

One important note here is that the question at the end is never a yes or no question. If we had asked “Do you like being a nurse?” we might get a message back that just says ‘Yes’. Yes, that’s a response, but that does nothing for getting a great conversation going.

Should you use exclamation points?

If you notice, we use several exclamation points. Why? We think these give an excited energy with the message. Just look at the difference here and tell us how you feel with each.

“Hi Sarah! I saw on your profile you’re a nurse. My mom was actually a nurse too! What’s your favorite part about the job?”

“Hi Sarah. I saw on your profile you’re a nurse. My mom was actually a nurse too. What’s your favorite part about the job?”

Notice how strangely cold the second message feels? You don’t have to put an exclamation on every sentence, but it helps on a few!

Should I introduce myself?

If you’d like to include your first name in the message, that’s totally fine! “Hi Sarah! My name is John. I saw…etc. etc.” It’s totally up to you if you want to include that, but we like it.

As for talking about yourself and sharing more about you, we feel like it’s best to let that come out naturally in the ensuing conversation. You’re giving enough when you tie the thing you saw to yourself to get them interested.

What Should I Do If They Don’t Respond?

So, let’s say you send the perfect first message. How long should you wait for a response? And if you don’t get one, what do you do?

For us, we like to take the approach of “send the first message, and then forget about them until they actually respond.” In other words, don’t expend any emotional energy “waiting” until a conversation has actually started. So, in reality, the answer is you’d wait forever, but you wouldn’t even notice it because you’re not thinking about it.

As for sending a follow up, we recommend either no follow up or one follow up (about a week and a half later). Some people only check their profiles once a week (some less often than this). By giving at least a week and a half before a follow up, you ensure that you don’t send a follow up before they even see the first message, which can feel weird.

And what should your follow up say? Keep it simple, polite, and not desperate.

“I thought I’d send one more message in case the first got buried in your inbox. Would be fun to get to know each other!”

Something like that works perfectly, or again, no follow up is also totally fine.