How to get your online match to message you back

You’ve uploaded your photos, you’ve written a great online profile and your thumbs ache from swiping through potential matches.  You’re in the thick of online dating and have a couple of matches that you want to reach out to and get to know better.  Just where do you start?

The thing is you want to come up with a witty opener, something other than the usual ‘Hi, how are you?’.  You could be predictable and ask them something based on their profile…OR you could use the brain between your ears and take a personal approach.  This is exactly what one guy did and it netted him a 100% success rate with the ladies.  Joe Bagel decided to create poetic masterpieces based on the initials of his prospective matches name.  His excellent wordsmith skills certainly got him noticed by the ladies, and you can read the full article here.

With so many singletons now using online dating sites to find their perfect match your potential match may well have been inundated with inbox requests and your opening flirtation needs to hit the mark.

Getting your online match to message your back

Remember the phrase ‘quality over quantity’ – never has it been truer than when sending messages to potential dates.  Rather than adopting the idea of cast the net wide go exclusive and only message a select number of matches. For the guys reading this, trust me many women can spot a rehashed message a mile off.   We get so many of those lazy mass-messages that we just ignore them.  If you spend a little more time creating a unique message, you’ll probably find it’s much more productive. For example, why not try an ice breaker question ‘What are your top five movies?’, nearly everyone loves a good movie and this will see what common ground you have.

Don’t bombard your matches.  If you send a message and they take a while to answer back.  Don’t sweat it.  People are busy and lead a life outside of their dating app and it may just well be there is other stuff they need to attend to.  It is easy to think the worst but keep your cool.  Don’t keep sending messages and (unless you’ve written something really offensive) you don’t need to message them to apologise for getting in touch.

Get to the point.  Once you’ve hit up a conversation and the messages are flowing ask your match if they’d be happy to take the conversation either to a phone call or a coffee.  There is no point in stringing it out.  Whether you’re a guy or a girl be bold and make the first move and ask the other one out so you can actually have a more in-depth conversation and get off your phones and talk face to face.

Don’t be lazy.  Whilst it may be tempting to use phrases and acronyms during your conversation good spelling and grammar goes a long way in making the right impression.  Intelligent people are generally looking for someone on their level and the overuse of emojis (no matter how cute the unicorn one is) smacks of immaturity and the fact you’ve had one too many cans of Red Bull for the day.

Keep it lighthearted.  Online messaging apps are for light-hearted chat and banter.  Keep the serious stuff about exclusivity and your hopes for the relationship for if/when you meet – that way you can gauge accurately your date’s response.

These are just some of the tips you can put into practice to help make messaging your online matches a success, which ultimately is a HUGE confidence boost for anyone doing online dating.

So go forth and get your creative hat on and start chatting.  If you have any personal stories or mistakes to add to the list, we’d love to hear about them in the comments!