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 agree with most… the typo one is a big one fore many though so that should have been added.
Also I dont believe in #3 – Use an unusual greeting. We always hear women say they wish guys would just say hello… not some cheesy hola, and most go as far as saying “If one more guy asks what’s up I’m going to kill them” so those are definitely backwards. I do get a better response with just a hello.
It’s sickening the way the women take for granted the entire impetus for conversation; that they’re entitled to it. Making a lot of assumptions about peoples intentions is a bad thing. Also, when the hour strikes midnight the women’s messages will quit pouring in – nature has its way. Let that be a warning to every primadonna lacking personality but highly expectant of prince charming.
I think metal has such a great reply rate because metal fans tend to be rather gung ho about their music, and we get excited when we find others who share an interest in the genre.
I would imagine the same responses would be received for electronic music, but there are so many different names for it, and sub-genres, that I imagine it would be hard to map out the same way.
As a male, I too get turned off by pictures of women in motorcycles, wearing bikinis, or draped across their beds. Just not what I am looking for…
It means that referencing a person’s profile works. They picked those words for their stats because the words are very specific and unlikely to be used randomly.
Actually don’t bother approving my last post, cause:
a) if you take 3 days to approve a post it kinda takes the the spontinaity out the reply (not quite sure why 5 posts after mine have been approved).
and b) I’ve since sent about 5 messages, and not had a reply to any of them, so maybe Chris was right in the first place.
Very interesting.A lot of people seem to be taking this far too seriously though any of the negative words can be used as a positive if used right and vise-versa. I think the tool to research your own words should be included for A-listers (and me for coming up with the idea!
I have some new words for it. Passion, fun, welcome, wow, sophisticated, sports, fascinating, family, tease, hang-out, chill-out, spontaneous.
How about smilies?
;P
;D
Does swearing lower or raise your response rate?
basically, according to this study, the perfect opening message on OKC is something like:
—
how’s it going?
i’m an atheist with tattoos whose favorite movies all involve zombies. lol.
i’m also in an all vegetarian metal band, and play video games.
i noticed that you are studying physics in grad school. that’s pretty awesome.
sorry if i seem a little awkward. i’m mostly writing because i’m curious what your name is and because i think you have good taste.
—
that should basically net you like 437% response rate. have fun with that!
Another point is there is a right and a very wrong way of giving a physical compliment. You’re on a dating site! There’s nothing wrong with being forward (charm is a huge part of seduction) but limit yourself to one or you’re gonna look creepy, try-hard and/or desperate.
If you’re a guy being observant and noticing something most guys wont will give bonus points (such as her sense of style) . Link it on to something for example “You look incredible! How do you keep yourself in shape, I’m not shallow but I live an active life so it’s important that a girl can keep up with me. ”
If you absolutly must comment on her eyes or smile it must be genuine. Don’t do it unless you can clearly see it in a quality close-up photo. Use some adverbs or adjectives and other more flamboyant language . “You have beautiful eyes” BAD “You have the most incredibly mesmerizing eyes” slightly better.
“Chris
What about the reply rates of phrases like “I’m 6′2″” or “independently wealthy?” I’m sure those are WAAAY above your measly 30% listed here!
I’m a guy, and I’ve HONESTLY never used ANY of these pitfalls in an email to a woman. But, I’m not tall and I’m below-average looking, and after messaging 140 women over the last nine months on OkStupid, not a SINGLE DAMN ONE replied to me. Where’s the study relating men’s height to women’s reply rates?”
You’re spot on your height is the reason you’re not successful with women. Not because it’s an issue to women but because it’s an issue to you. You’re using it as an excuse for failure. You need to become confident in your own skin. I know a guy who is 5′2 and can get a date any day he wants and I’m sure you know guys like that as well. Guess what! I’m 6′4 and I didn’t lose my virginity till I was 21 because I used to think that women were intimidated by my height.
Yeah sure some women wont be interested because you’re short but they’re the exception not the rule. They aren’t worth your time and effort anyway.
I think that most of us here are guilty of the pitfall of taking statistical analyses personally, which is something you just shouldn’t do. Anyone who’s had Statistics 101 knows that all these calculations apply to POPULATIONS, not INDIVIDUALS. Thus, any word, term, or manner of writing you use in your messages or profiles may work for you, despite being on the “red” list. While I think that the statistical analysis of language is a worthwhile undertaking, it is only useful for study, not for application. I do agree with Rogue 367 that it might be good to have additional response differentiation between male and female users, as well as age groups.
Good luck to everyone!
Can someone combine all these into one copy-paste message to do a short trial run out there?
craig: -20%
Dear OKCupid, your users are diverse, so please try to be less heterocentric in your interpretation of the results.
One thing to think about when looking at the religion element is what other avenues people who are religious have for finding like minded people. People who feel religion is important to them typically go to mass/church. That gives them a place to meet other people who share a common interest, in person no less. Agnostics, Atheists, or others that choose not to place a value in religion do not have that social setting and thus probably have a higher percentage of them using web based dating sites to try and meet a match.
if your not presenting a wealthy, willing to be taken advantage of personna, these women on the net want nothing to do with you.
they tend to be gold diggers, who have nothing to offer except for a few moments of so called bliss.
wait till you have to go to the dr’s office to have those bumps checked out.
if you ask me, your better off without the kinds of women who need to find a date online.
yea, if your fat, ugly, which most on here are.look at the old picture they present as the main picture, vs the rest of the pictures.notice anything different? thye gained 60 lbs in 2 years!!
This article is interesting, but a lot of it is just reinforcing what should be common sense. Personally, I’ve been naturally following these guidelines because you’d have to be an idiot to not realize these things.
–To Kutaly: Why would you message someone, or respond to a message from someone that has nothing in their profile? Just because they’re good looking? It’s almost certainly spam if they don’t have any profile content.
–To Rogue367: You know how the article talks about good grammar and spelling? Yeah…
–To Tine and Chris: You both have pretty much the same (and excellent) point, I agree they may have neglected some important filtering factors.
Mirroring and expanding on what’s already been said here at least once (by Schwax, http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/14/online-dating-advice-exactly-what-to-say-in-a-first-message/comment-page-3/#comment-1257 ):
Drawing the conclusion that instances of the words AIM, MSN, etc. hurt response rate is horribly deceptive and disingenuous, since it ignores the obvious fact that the sender is *trying to move the conversation off okc.* When presented with someone’s screen names/email address, there are three immediately apparent outcomes:
1. The recipient is interested in talking to the sender, so s/he continues the conversation via the external channel provided, and thus has no need to respond via okc.
2. The recipient is interested in talking to the sender, but isn’t willing or able to do so via that external channel provided [yet? e.g. if the message said "Would you like to chat via AIM? If so, let me know your screen name."], so s/he responds via okc.
3. The recipient is not interested in talking to the sender, so does not respond.
Given the average response rate of roughly 32% (and ignoring the possibility of an uneven distribution of the occurrence of the terms “AIM,” “MSN,” etc. between genders), the 10-16% okc response rate doesn’t seem like a ridiculous stretch to say that roughly 50-66% of the average response rate just takes the messages onto AIM/etc immediately when presented with the suggestion.
Fascinating stuff, although I agree with the above poster about “sharpening”. We have an alternative selection for religion here in NZ which is “Jedi”, a good option IMO.
K
Anything Alternative
There’s an important factor you’re missing from the analysis though – you’ve not said whether the responses are positive or negative. e.g. while atheism may well get a 42% response rate, if all the responses start “Sorry, but I could never date an atheist”, that’s not so helpful.
Hell yeah!
):
I, myself, do not respond to IM started with “hi”, “hey sexy/cutie”.
In here I’ll copy and paste my post (I’m too lazy
“what do you want to hear? “hi”?
ok:
-hi
-hi
-wassup?
-nuthin
whoah, a truly stimulating chat
if you are starting the conversation, you better have something interesting to say and not some crap as: “we got super weather here”, “you look very attractive” and other stupid things..”
SEE??
I want to add that whoever said that pictures and match percentages is more important than the message either
A) doesn’t receive a lot of messages or
B) is a guy
because as a female, I have seen firsthand the worst of worst messages you can receive. I’ll agree that “Hi, hello, we should talk” are bad, but I think “how’s it going” and “what’s up” are just as bad. As a subject header – I prefer something completely random, like the title of your message to me, the cover of the book per se, but definitely not some generalized greeting that I see in the flood of messages I receive everyday.
I also want to add that some guys are just not interesting, no matter how hot they are. They see the word tattoo in my SN, and then look at my pictures, and just assume that I like tattoos. Subsequently I receive a message, “Hey, wats ur name? How many tattoos u got?” when it obviously states all three of these in my profile.
So here’s my advice: screw this percentages crap. Screw all the”words that get a reply”. This ain’t rocket science people, it’s communication. If you want a reply, honestly put in some effort, read a girl/guy’s profile, and create a UNIQUE message crafted just for them. Show them your character and your personality. Remember, the first impression is the lasting one.
The worst is the late night creepers who message you out of boredom or because they’re horny.
Question regarding the study….
All of the words are taken out of context; right? Your numbers say that there are little replies to a greeting like ‘hello’… are you able to figure out what the rest of the messages say behind that initial hello? Since it’s a more formal/traditional way of greeting someone you would think the rest of the message would also be formal/traditional/uptight, spelling out boring and uninteresting for the recipient… maybe? Would you be able to test those kinds of theories?
You’re revealing all this good dating intel that I was already using. Damn. How am I supposed to get ahead now in the dating arms race?
The one thing I have trouble with when messaging people on OKC is the problem of knowing what to say to someone (especially girls) wihout coming across as being either, boring or self indulgent when talking about personal hobbies or interests so I don;t message people an awful lot because I’m concerned that no one will reply to my messages even though I’ve been kind and curteous and not smarmed up to them in any way, and that’s why I often wait for them to make the first move because I feel that I’m just gonna make myself look like an idiot as a result!
I always found that if a woman says she wants to “give me a****job”, I tend to respond more frequently.
I dunno, might be just me. :/
I see lots of people are commenting about how the lack of reply to mails asking/giving emails out could be due to the responder talking to them on their email instead.
I think they’re not being responded to at all. I NEVER do. Someone messages me with “hey, wanna chat? My email is qwertyuiop@hotmail.com” (anyone who starts off a first message with an email usually does so like that), and, besides the creepy factor, there is no incentive for me to respond! No attempt made at starting a conversation, or get my interest at all. So of course I don’t give them my personal information.
Remember kids, cum hoc ergo propter hoc . Correlation does not imply causation.
Think of this as epidemiology of messaging diseases. Maybe ‘ur’ only shows such a high failure rate because people who abbreviate are more likely to have bare-bones profiles with poorly composed photos. And I promise you, Atheism got its boost because atheists generally bring it up only when talking to other atheists. We’re a proud, hated group, so there is a /modicum/ of camaraderie among us. Also, nobody likes a bible thumper.
Now that the PSA is over: That was a fun read! Thanks for putting it together, OKC. Keep it up.
follow your heart and be honest. that is the truest approach.
I’m kinda skeptical about the atheist one…
Maybe it’s just my location, but most of everyone around my part of the world is “Christian” “Catholic” “God” “God” “God”. How do you spend your Friday nights? Prayer service worshiping God. What are you doing with your life? Praising God. About you? I put God first in my life, etc. What six things can you not do without? 1. God. Bleh.
Not trying to start anything religious, here–to each his own–just saying that’s a deal-breaker for me, the atheist, and that another atheist has, thus far, been hard to come by.
~
Hi OKCupid dataset!
Boy u r so sexy u r so fine. Dataset, I wd lyk 2 sex u up. I like the way you move, bebbeh.
(I hear datasets respond differently to first contact than people do.
)
In addition to the obvious things (e.g. grammer + humour ftw), my view on this is simple: I agree that you just need to read someone’s profile and write a message that conveys why you find them *interesting*, possibly in an offbeat way, or with questions, whatever. You do find them interesting, right?
I checked through the last 20-odd messages I’ve sent to girls and I haven’t had replies from about… two. All the replies I’ve *had* have been pleasant/interested/fantastic-to-some-degree. For the record, the reason I’m still messaging people instead of having met/dated them? I’m making friends overseas before I travel there for a 4 month holiday.