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Write and Send Email Effectively
Avoiding Spam
To browse ads or place a
personal, most sites require you to set up a profile. This usually means
that you’ll
have to give them an email address. That said, I suggest you create a
separate, new email account for this purpose. This way, if a site has a
tendency toward sending you unwanted email, your primary email account won’t
get bombarded with crap.
Initial Email Correspondence
If you
find someone you are interested in emailing, here are some tips. First
off, look over their personal ad and try to notice things. Is it concise, long,
playful, serious, and so on? In order to gain connection and rapport, you
want to send them an initial email written in the style that they use in
their personal ad.
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The same holds true if someone contacts you. Notice how
they wrote their email and try to respond in like manner. This is a good
way to make a great first impression. And when you are competing for
attention with so many other people, first impressions might be all you get.
Follow-Up Emails
Ultimately, you want
to let another person see the real you and it’s foolish to put on an
act. While it is important to try to gain rapport on the first email by
writing in a style familiar to the other party, you don’t want to do this for
too long.
Remember, some people get hundreds of responses a month to their personal ad.
With your initial email, you want to separate yourself as best you can by
showing the person a familiar style. But once you distinguish yourself and
have caught the person’s interest, be yourself. If at that point you two
don’t click, move on. There are hundreds of thousands of other people to
try.
Email Subject Lines
Like you personal ad’s headline, an email’s subject
line is the item that gets attention. What you write in your subject line can be
the difference between whether your email gets read or whether it gets deleted.
If you can control what you write in the subject of the email, try to say
something that connects to the other person’s keenest point of interest.
For instance, if they mention ninety times that they love music, mention this in
the subject line of your email. Spend a minute or two on this, because it
may mean the difference between whether this person opens your email or someone
else’s.
Email Content
Like the subject line, you want the words in your email
to convey connection to the person reading it. Look at their personal ad
and ask the following questions:
- What 5 things are most important to this person?
- Is their writing length short, long, or medium length?
- How’s their grammar: do they use slang, capitalize the
first letter of sentences, spell everything correctly, and so on?
- What are their hobbies and interests?
There is a lot of power in answering those four
questions. One, they easily let you get to know the other person.
More importantly, don’t you think that the answers to those questions will help
you to write to that person in a way where they really feel connection with
you? Absolutely.
It’s not always necessary to get this involved in the online dating
process. However, I have found that the more I do up front, the easier the
dates come. This is why I usually set aside a little time when I am
looking through personal ads or responding to them. And my resultant
success is always well worth the effort.
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