Exactly What To Say In A Very first Message
Ok, here’s the experiment. We analyzed over 500,000 very first contacts on our dating site, OkCupid. Our program looked at keywords and phrases, how they affected reply rates, and what trends were statistically significant. The result: a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself. Online dating advice at its best. Let’s go:
Netspeak, bad grammar, and bad spelling are phat turn-offs. Our negative correlation list is a fool’s lexicon: ur, u, wat, wont, and so on. These all make a terrible very first impression. In fact, if you count hit (and we do!) the worst six words you can use in a very first message are all stupid slang.
Language like this is such a strong deal-breaker that correctly written but otherwise workaday words like don’t and won’t have nicely above average response rates (36% and 37%, respectively).
Interesting exceptions to the “no netspeak” rule are expressions of amusement. haha (45% reply rate) and lol (41%) both turned out to be fairly good for the sender. This makes a certain sense: people like a sense of humor, and you need to be casual to convey genuine laughter. hehe was also a successful word, but much less so (33%). Scientifically, this is because it’s a little evil sounding.
So, in brief, it’s okay to laugh, but keep the rest of your message grammatical and punctuated.
Rule Two: Avoid physical compliments
Albeit the data shows this advice holds true for both sexes, it’s mostly directed at guys, because they are way more likely to talk about looks. You might think that words like gorgeous, beautiful, and sexy are nice things to say to someone, but no one wants to hear them. As we all know, people normally like compliments, but when they’re used as pick-up lines, before you’ve even met in person, they inevitably feel…ew. Besides, when you tell a woman she’s beautiful, chances are you’re not.
On the other mitt, more general compliments seem to work well:
The word pretty is a flawless case explore for our point. As an adjective, it’s a physical compliment, but as an adverb (as in, “I’m pretty good at sports.”) it’s is just another word.
When used as an adverb it actually does very well (a phenomenon we’ll examine in detail below), but as pretty‘s uses become more clearly about looks, reply rates decline sharply. You’re pretty and your pretty are phrases that could go either way (physical or non-). But very pretty is almost always used to describe the way something or someone looks, and you can see how that works out.
Rule Trio: Use an unusual welcoming
We took a close look at salutations. After all, the way you choose to embark your initial message to someone is the “first impression of your very first impression.” The results astonished us:
The top three most popular ways to say “hello” were all actually bad beginnings. Even the slangy holla and yo perform better, bucking the general “be literate” rule. In fact, it’s smarter to use no traditional salutation at all (which earns you the reply rate of 27%) and just dive into whatever you have to say than to embark with hi. I’m not sure why this is: maybe the ubiquity of the most popular openings means people are more likely to just stop reading when they see them.
The more informal standard greetings: how’s it going, what’s up, and howdy all did very well. Maybe they set a more casual tone that people choose, however I have to say, You had me at ‘what’s up’ doesn’t fairly have the same ring to it.
Rule Four: Bring up specific interests
There are many words on the effective end of our list like zombie, band, tattoo, literature, studying, vegetarian (yes!), and metal (dual yes!) that are all clearly referencing something significant to the sender, the recipient, or, ideally, both. Talking about specific things that interest you or that you might have in common with someone is a time-honored way to make a connection, and we have proof here that it works. We’re presenting just a smattering: in fact every “niche” word that we have significant data on has a positive effect on messaging.
Even more effective are phrases that engage the reader’s own interests, or display you’ve read their profile:
Rule Five: If you’re a stud, be self-effacing
Awkward, sorry, apologize, kinda, and very likely all made masculine messages more successful, yet none of them except sorry affects female messages. As we mentioned before, pretty, no doubt because of its adverbial meaning of “to a fair degree; moderately” also helps masculine messages. A lot of real-world dating advice tells fellows to be more certain, but evidently hemming and hawing a little works well online.
It could be that appearing unassured makes the writer seem more vulnerable and less menacing. It could be that women like guys who write mumbly. But either way: guys should be careful not to let the appearance of vulnerability become the appearance of sweaty desperation: please is on the negative list (22% reply rate), and in fact it is the only word that is actually worse for you than its netspeak equivalent (pls, 23%)!
Rule 6: Consider becoming an atheist
Mentioning your religion helps you, but, paradoxically, it helps you most if you have no religion. We know that’s going to piss a lot of people off, and we’re more or less tongue-in-cheek with this advice, but it’s what the numbers say.
These are the religious terms that appeared a statistically significant number of times. Atheist actually displayed up remarkably often (342 times per Ten,000 messages, 2nd only to five hundred fifty two mentions of christian and ahead of two hundred seventy eight for jewish and one hundred forty two for muslim).
However very few people actually do it, invoking the sky-breaking thunderbolts of zeus does help a person get noticed (reply rate 56%), but maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise on a site that is itself named for a member of the Classical pantheon. So if you can’t bring yourself to deny the deity, consider opening yourself up to a entire wacky bunch of them. But ideally you should just disbelieve the entire thing. It can help your love life, and, besides, if there indeed was a god, wouldn’t very first messages always get a reply?
A word about user privacy on OkCupid
Tho’ this post talks in detail about the content of people’s messages on OkCupid, all messages have been anonymized, with sender and recipient data and all IP and timestamp information stripped out. In addition, our analysis program looked at messages only two or three words at a time, to track the success of certain words or phrases (like “what’s up” vs. “wats up”). The program then aggregated results by phrase before presenting the data. No one at OkCupid read any actual user messages to compile this post.