The challenge of the introductory email for online hookups
hi angel you look so pretty,really love to be your friend.am joe shmoe,love to have your yahoo id so we have instant chat,mine is joeshmoecontractors@yahoo.com really like to hear from you.please i will be waiting to see your reply.have a great day
Okay, so I'm on a roll with exemplar emails, so I'm going to keep up with the theme today. This email just arrived to my OkCupid inbox.
Here's the kicker for you guys out there: women online get a lot of email, so what you want to do is set your email apart. I've talked about this in the past, but it bears repeating. What may sound like a perfectly fine basic intro approach would be, in the context of 50 or 100 basic intros, just so much uninteresting noise. The bad stuff, like Mr. Shmoe, above, stands out for its humor value, but lots of guys who I'm sure are actually interesting and might be a lot of fun in bed shoot themselves in the foot by not thinking about the context in which their email will be received.
If you're writing to someone on a dating site, they probably don't get completely inundated on a daily basis, but they probably do get at least several emails a month, and she's probably looking for the ones that really shine. If you're writing to someone on Craig's List, you have to do even better, because she is getting inundated, as she'll likely receive more than 100 emails over the course of the first couple of days her ad is up.
Reread your introductory email in that context and imagine you're on the receiving end of it. Does it stand out? If not, think about what might set you apart from the crowd, because there really is a crowd. Just because it sounds good when its on its own doesn't mean it'll do the trick in a full inbox. After all, you may look hot in sweats and a t-shirt, but if you're going to try to pick someone up in a bar, you'll put a bit of extra effort into your appearance before you leave the house. Do yourself a favor and spiff up your email the same way.
