Ok, here’s the experiment.
We analyzed over 500,000 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. This is the second post of our statistical investigation into the optimal online dating message; a note about how we protected user privacy is here. Let’s go:
#1 – Be literate.
Netspeak, bad grammar, and bad spelling are huge turn-offs. Our negative correlation list is a fool’s lexicon: ur, u, wat, wont, and so on. These all make a terrible first impression. In fact, if you count hit (and we do!) the worst 6 words you can use in a 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 quite 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 short, it’s okay to laugh, but keep the rest of your message grammatical and punctuated.
#2 – Avoid physical compliments.
Although 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 hand, more general compliments seem to work well:
The word pretty is a perfect case study 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.
#3 – Use an unusual greeting.
We took a close look at salutations. After all, the way you choose to start your initial message to someone is the “first impression of your first impression.” The results surprised 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 start 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 prefer, though I have to say
You had me at ‘what’s up’
doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
#4 – Don’t try to take it outside.
Obviously, all successful OkCupid relationships outgrow our in-site messaging feature. But an offer to chat or of an email address right off the bat is a sure turn off. One of the things online dating has going for it is its relative anonymity, and if you start chipping away at that too early, you’ll scare the other person off.
Also, don’t ask for or give away a cell number (10%). I thought that was a no-brainer. For the brainless among you who are doing this, my best advice is to paypal me 25 dollars and never use a computer again.
#5 – 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 (double yes!) that are all clearly referencing something important 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 show you’ve read their profile:
#6 – If you’re a guy, be self-effacing.
Awkward, sorry, apologize, kinda, and probably all made male 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 male messages. A lot of real-world dating advice tells men to be more confident, but apparently hemming and hawing a little works well online.
It could be that appearing unsure makes the writer seem more vulnerable and less threatening. It could be that women like guys who write mumbly. But either way: men 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%)!
#7 – 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 showed up surprisingly often (342 times per 10,000 messages, second only to 552 mentions of christian and ahead of 278 for jewish and 142 for muslim).
Though 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 whole wacky bunch of them. But ideally you should just disbelieve the whole thing. It can help your love life, and, besides, if there really was a god, wouldn’t first messages always get a reply?
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I find this very interesting…
I know why “Zombie” is such a popular word!!!! Because there are a ton of girls on this website who post Halloween pictures — a number of which are of them dressed up like zombies. I’ve seen quite a few…
I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of these first messages are people referencing someone’s profile picture. I know that when I look at someone’s profile, I ALWAYS look at their pictures… Furthermore, if that person is doing something awesome or being funny in those pictures, I’m much more inclined to remember something like that as opposed to something stupid that they wrote in their “About me” section.
Speaking from experience, I have had a number of people message me in regards to my own pictures and they have always been in the form of a compliment. It’s usually something like, “You’re pictures are fun” or “You’re cute” or “You look like you’re having soo much fun.” or “You look like fun!” or “I went to that festival! It was so much fun.” etc etc etc. All compliments, all first responses, all based on my pictures… DUDE – read my profile. I do all kinds of shit, but for some reason, that’s all people wanna comment on… pictures of me having fun @ some random party!! It kind of makes sense though… I’ve messaged several people and done the same thing…
Ex. “Oh, I saw that you went to the Grand Canyon. What’d you think? I went to the Grand Canyon last year… it was awesome! Oh my god, we have so much in common… lets be friends!”
My guess is that the word “zombie” was effective in first responses because it was being used in two ways:
1) It allowed the sender to personalize the message by mentioning something about the other person (in this case, a profile picture or zombie reference). This indicated to the receiver that the sender actually took the time to read or at least look at their profile (Girls apparently like it when you pay attention to what they have to say… can you believe that?!?!).
2) I imagine that if you are commenting on someone’s profile or profile picture, you’re not going to insult them. On the contrary… you’re going to compliment them (Girls like compliments when their sincere… can you believe that?!?).
Another thing that I’ve noticed is that when people mention zombies in their profile, they are usually making a joke or being sarcastic.
Ex. I spend a lot of time thinking about… (what I’m gonna do when zombies take over the world!!!)
– if I had a dollar for every time I heard that reference… I would be a rich man.
In summary…
1) People like zombies
2) People like a sense of humor
3) People like compliments
4) People like similar interests
5) People like it when you pay attention to what they say
6) People like pictures that make you seem fun, interesting, and/or attractive
There is a redundancy in your PayPal link text: “…$25 dollars…” Either ditch the $ or ditch the word “dollars”.
[...] Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message [OKCupid Blog] [...]
so you idiots think and believe that
getting a reply message on some stupid dating site is more important then to save your soul?..
I WISH YOU A GOOD TIME IN HELL!……
atheism is TOTALLY in style.
I got the general theme V referred to, but not using capital letters in said response doesn’t, to me, say “literate.” It’s likely a different thing to different people, and your punctuation proves precise, but in much the same way I’d kick someone to the curb for turning out to falsely represent themselves, the lack of capital letters would, in fact, stop me from responding to a message. Now, throw in somewhere in there that a thief broke into your apartment and stole nothing but your shift keys, and I’d likely find that amusing enough to overrule my mixed-case-for-a-reason rule.
lol
“hola” is okay but “holla” not?
And will de bad effect of “beautiful” and the good effect of “awesome” balance “you’re awesome beautiful” to the same level as “you’re hot”?
Very nice! the post even made some waves in the media, Yahoo UK front-page as a matter of fact: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6196584/Atheists-have-more-success-at-online-dating.html
backwards message your write!
any analysis on word count and brevity? how about punctuation? i want to see how my all-time favorite “!!!!” ranks.
I’m wondering if there might be a method error in the part about “taking it offline”. If I get a message containing somebody’s AIM name, I’m much more likely to contact them on that than to write back on here. For what it’s worth, that chart could be COMPLETELY reversed, where the lower response rates were actually higher off-site contacts.
Just a thought on the method. Otherwise, loving the research. It’s nice to actually see the science behind what’s going on.
Go ZEUS!
Sad (actually great) my account is not active anymore but I should look up what I ususally wrote. Always a personal message of course and couldn’t complain about the reply rate.
“Atheist” probably shows up favorably simply because I think there are a lot of atheists looking for love online (I should know, I’m an atheist who met my atheist husband on a dating website). We don’t really have social organizations like churches that help us meet people, so online is a good place to turn.
Schwax actually brings up a very good point. if someone were to give out their email address or AIM screen name (and most likely more contact info there), they’d be less likely to return to OkCupid to send a response, hence a lower “reply” rate albeit a higher return rate, if you will.
I’m also curious to length of message in correlation to reply rate. if someone types 2000+ words, I’m less likely to read it all and thus less likely to reply if they didn’t catch my attention in the first 500 words or so, and on the other end, I’m even less likely to reply to someone who sends <50 words unless they're really captivating.
[...] Haberin detayı Telegraph’ın sitesinde , flört sitesinde de detaylar var. [...]
I’ve tried this line, but I don’t think its working: “Vegetarian zombies with metal band tattoos, who studied physics in grad school enjoyed video games and literature.” What am I donig wrong?
Besides misspelling “doing”.
Yeah, as an agnostic myself I suspect “atheist” is *actually* functioning much the same way as “vegetarian” here.
Fun stuff!
So, the best pick-up line ever is…
“Howdy! How’s it going?
I noticed that in your profile you mention that as an atheist, you have an interest in awesome metal bands. You have pretty good taste. I apologize if this is awkward, but I’m curious what you think about the movie about the vegetarian zombie? It’s one of my favorite movies.”
WHAT! How is metal so positively up there? I’m finding a tough time finding people sending messages about metal. Unless I’m the one skewing the numbers?
How’s it going, Zeus?
Sorry, you mention a pretty much awesome metal atheist band.
How about a message like this?
They talk about this even on atheist Italian websites (for those who understand Italian: http://www.uaar.it/news/2009/09/16/dating-online-atei-hanno-maggiori-probabilita-successo/).
There’s an extra “)” in the link above, sorry.
http://www.uaar.it/news/2009/09/16/dating-online-atei-hanno-maggiori-probabilita-successo/
My roommate and I have been having success with “I see you’re on OkCupid, may I seduce you?”
I totally agree. I think the only one of these rules I’ve ever broken was starting with “hi” or “hello.” But in terms of receiving messages, I was always turned off by guys who focused excessively on weird physical compliments; many of these were also obviously cut-and-pasted from generic messages that they probably spam out to lots of women. Another red flag is if the message implies that he read my profile, but obviously didn’t, e.g., “your profile sounds so interesting and I think we would be a great match,” when we have only 21% in common, or after I actually changed my profile to indicate that I am in a relationship (very clearly, in capital letters, at the top of the profile) and not currently dating anyone else!
Lastly, thumbs up on the part about IM’ing. I always felt weirded out by strange guys trying to chat me up on there. They basically lurk to see which females sign on, and immediately send you an IM. If you don’t feel like chatting, they get insulted. Before too long, I just made sure to turn the chat function off anytime I logged in.
I’m sure not all women feel the same way as I do, but most of my friends are not interested in IMing with a stranger…so maybe you fellas should wait until you’ve exchanged a few emails or something. Just friendly advice!
The baseline average for these graphs is right around 32%. If I’m understanding how this works, that means one should get roughly one third of his/her messages replied to. Does that seem high to anyone else?
Have they done a study on how to take a good picture/be attractive yet? I’ll wait for that one.
That is a great article! I can’t stand misspellings and netspeak either!
Don’t forget that all this applies to mostly americans, the majority of okcupid’s members. I believe there are some changes when you are from another country/culture or trying to contact someone from another country/culture. Also, the kind of people on okcupid varies depending on the website. Different people on myspace, tagged, badoo, friendster… etc etc. So these general guidelines should not be applied in all cases, useful advice anyway.
Are idientified scammers removed from stats ?
@ Dirk:
“Hola” is Spanish for “Hello”.
It’s pronounce like this: “oh-la”, unlike “holla”.
Actually, I think percentages only apply if you’re a guy. If you hve a vagina you’re guaranteed to have all your messages replied to, unless he’s gay, or died of a heart attack at the shock of having a woman message him.
You know, I follow most of these guidelines yet hardly get a response.
^^ How to get a good photo? If you’re a guy–
1.Wear a real shirt, not a T or a wife-beater.
2.Don’t pose in front of your motorcycle, truck or car. Women hope you have more going for you than that.
3. Smile, dammit. Scowling isn’t sexy.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I found this guys’ profile when I stumbled across a funny quiz on okcupid.com. I then searched for an, “INFJ + male.” I read his profile and thought we had a lot in common. I made an account on okcupid.com, and messaged him. (note: we were married 6 months later and have been married for 2 years in December.The muffler goes woo woo!!) I would post it here, but the screen shot is so much better. We are two peas in a pod.
As if that wasn’t enough…this article just put okcupid 5 more notches higher on the totem pole of dating sites!
If you guys know all of this, why is there still a wink function in this site?
Yea i think this is pretty true. But any guy that wants to talk about God without sounding cheesy or fake is at a good start in my book
Interesting! I am hugely turned off by net speak.. I find myself thinking, if you cared so much to message me.. couldn’t you have actually typed real words? And a catchy greeting is nice but not necessary. Hey, Hi and Hello seem like they should be fine.. and why is metal so happening?
The perfect first message:
How’s it going? I noticed that you had good taste as you mention an awesome zombie metal band in your profile. As an atheist, I find this fascinating. Sorry if I took up too much of your time!
Guess I am in luck, as I am in a Metal band called Atheist! Guess I have an Unquestionable presence!
” Kelly Shaefer says:
September 17, 2009 at 6:45 am
Guess I am in luck, as I am in a Metal band called Atheist! Guess I have an Unquestionable presence!”
you are a hero
the reason metal is such a hit here is because people who like metal, LOVE metal. and will always seek out other metal loving people. metal fans are more passionate about their chosen music than any other fanbase
here’s what i believe….well, first off, love is supposed to be patient and kind. far too many men and woman force themselves upon you.I’ve had countless women come onto me at the site or try to get my number.Naturally, i am thinking-woa…u barely know me and you want what? ok, so i usually ask them to be my friend tho, some are ok with that and others not so much..
But then, i look at the study, and wow..not to use computer lingo?ok, i agree with that now, cuz i had such a bad time before.and opening lines…but How’s it going in the subject line for every message?That and awesome? Wow.
But then, there is one thing that gripes me…and that is the fact that this study says the following quote unquote:
These are the religious terms that appeared a statistically significant number of times. Atheist actually showed up surprisingly often (342 times per 10,000 messages, second only to 552 mentions of christian and ahead of 278 for jewish and 142 for muslim).
Though 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 whole wacky bunch of them. But ideally you should just disbelieve the whole thing. It can help your love life, and, besides, if there really was a god, wouldn’t first messages always get a reply?
if someone can’t contact you and love you for you, then you don’t need them.Yes, it’s true that most of the women i contact on here is christian because i beleive in that sort of thing. I also DO NOT BELEIVE IN SILENCING MY GOD.I STAND UP FOR GOD AND I THINK THAT ONLY A HYPOCRITE WOULD SAY THAT. I know…. i know…
yes, i do not mention god right off to bat, because it’s not proper to go around flauniting ur christianity.So i do agree to a point there, but to telll people that they should turn from God or make up something about themselves that would get replies? You’re basically telling them that we should all pretend to be someone we are not and attract the opposite sex,which is just inviting a one night stand,because when they out whom you really are from someone other than you,they’d be gone.
Just be yourself.Love is supposed to be all these:patient, kind, never jealous,boastful, rude, selfish, hateful,never easily angered,it keeps no record of wrongs, so ther’s a lesson for you too…
It’s supposed to be forgiving.How is someone supposed to trust you after finding out you made up a lie about yourself..?they’d probably be wondering all the time who you really were out with last night or who you truly are.To avoid all the hooplah, get a book on dating….there are plenty of sites too with advice on how to make someone fall in love with you, and i guarantee they mostly say “Be Yourself.”Because love rejoices in truth.it always protects,trusts and hopes….and it always preserveres.”
this my friends, is true love.don’t fake urself….be yourself.
Crazy stuff
So the ideal first message is:
What’s up! How’s it going? You seem awesome cool.. it’s nice that you spent the time to create a fascinating profile. You mention many things in good taste, and I noticed that your name is very original. Curious what it means! Pretty much anything related to metal, zombies, physics, tattoo(s), video games and literature is my thing.. I’m sorry for making this so long, but first messages are kinda awkward.. anyway if you think you can handle this atheist-christian-jewish-muslim, who talks about allah on one hand and jesus the other, write me back!
sidsix: regarding the baseline rate, I’ve wondered the same thing. My guess is that they’ve just taken the total number of first messages sent and divided into it the total number of replies sent. What would be more interesting would be to know the per-person median reply rate. Or, even better, just post a figure with the whole distribution (x-axis=response rate, y-axis=people).
DateDaily has an article up on this topic as well: http://datedaily.com/news/dating-scoop/god-is-bad-for-online-dating/
The athiest/god thing is interesting, but I think it’s also OKCupid-specific. Users of OKC (unlike say Match or most other sites) are almost certainly a bit more educated/alternative/arty than average; that’s just my anecdotal observation, but i think of OKC population as a bit more liberal/intelligent than average, which would correlate with lower levels of religiosity.
Cupid and Zeus are members of different pantheons. The Greek equivalent of Cupid is Eros.
So, if the overall reply rate is 32%, and women write back to men 27% of the time, does that mean that men write back to women 37% of the time? If so, that’s not as a huge difference as I expected.
Also, how does this site break down by percentage of male/female?
@ Kelly Shaefer
I must also be in luck, as I got that awesomely old school reference. \m/
Per the ongoing discussion about stating a religious preference, I think the above ‘advice’ article’s phrasing of, “but it’s what the numbers say” regarding atheism, is outright misleading rather than just tongue and cheek, as the article claims. Indeed, I agree with Paige_Six, who implied the crux of the matter: it’s about how you communicate your religious or non-religious beliefs rather than whether you are stating them, however plainly or indirectly. Indeed, according to my own analysis on another far more-populated dating site, I determined there is in fact a high correlation, or amalgamated, interactive total effect, between stating preferences across the board, rather than being ambiguous. Granted, in a way, my point actually agrees with what the blog article is stating, but I insist that I am offering a finer distinction in fact. In short, ultimately one cannot escape being clear about who you are, else this ignores what would seem to be axiom of online evaluation, that others are always ticking off their specific preferences/red flags anyway, either in at first blush, or the second, or the third, etc. (i.e., comparing others to an articulated or non-articulated set of criteria). In general, I think evaluators respond better to knowing where someone else stands, though once again not necessarily in an over-advertised way, rather than simply deferring when certain things are not clear.