After coaching women for 15 years, I’ve learned the universal reasons they don’t reply to some online dating messages. Read this and immediately increase your reply rate.
“Nobody replies to my online dating messages!” is the most common thing I hear from male daters. But the truth is that women are replying to online dating messages every day. If they’re not replying to yours, you’re probably making one of the following mistakes.
Here’s what they are and how to fix them.
Women don’t reply to your online dating messages because you’re too efficient
Having crafted one brilliant online dating message, you feel it’s wasteful to send it only to one woman. So you copy it and send it to as many as possible. It’s a romantic mail merge, and one of them is bound to reply. Right?
Wrong. Women can smell when you’ve sent a duplicate message. And (I’m not sure why really), we find them incredibly insulting, like you dumped us and asked for our sister’s mobile number.
Try this instead
Spend 3 minutes (yes, use a timer; you can still be efficient) reading women’s profiles, picking out something interesting about her, and asking a question. We like questions; they show interest and they’re easy to answer. Long-term, you’ll save time by writing messages that get replies.
Women don’t reply to your online dating messages because you’re a man of few words
First messages that just say “Hi” don’t get replies. Again, they can feel to some women like a personal affront. (*I don’t actually agree with that.)
I know why you send brief opening messages. You don’t want to waste effort (see Efficiency, above) on crafting long, thoughtful messages to profiles that might not be active anymore, or might be fake, or might simply not be interested.
Your “Hi” (or “Hello”, or “How are you?”) is the dating equivalent of sonar. You send it out to see if anyone’s there.
(*When I coach women, I reassure them that a brief opening message is fine, for the reasons above, and advise them to simply reply in kind. Then we wait to see how much thought you put into your second message, when you know she’s there.)
Try this instead
Ask a question. We love questions. And ask one that’d be fun to answer. I was working with a lovely woman recently and the message she liked the most was, “If we did karaoke, which song would you most like to sing out loud?” Suddenly she had stories to tell of karaoke mishaps, Dolly Parton concerts, and what she sang in the shower. She was inspired! And the question itself must have taken the man exactly 45 seconds to type.
Women don’t reply to your online dating messages because you’re too handsome
Or tall, rich, successful, or anything else they can see by checking your profile. (Let’s assume they’re all positive things.)
The first thing a woman does when she receives your message is look at your photo. (I’ll bet you do the same when you get messages.) If she likes your picture, she’ll then check your other pictures and read your profile. If she likes those, then she’ll check your height, weight, age, marital status, postcode, likes/dislikes, musical tastes, pets…
She’ll be thorough.
If she likes all of that information, she’ll reply to your message.
But there could be anything on there that might put her off. And if she’s put off, she’s not going to waste your time (we respect your efficiency) by writing back.
Try this instead
Make sure your profile picture is as good as possible. Ideally, get a female friend to check it. If you never get replies, try using a different photo.
Then take a forensic-level look through your profile and correct any spelling mistakes, sloppy punctuation, glaring fibs (not every man in the world can be 6′ 4″), or negative comments.
Once it’s perfect, try sending messages again. You’ll get more replies.
And at that stage, you’ll be able to be more sanguine about anyone who doesn’t reply. It’s better not to hear back from people who aren’t a good fit.
Women don’t reply to your online dating messages because you’re too nice
I realise that’ll make you believe that it’s impossible to please us women. But men can be too nice.
Specifically, you can be too complimentary.
Messages like, “Hey beautiful, you look incredible!” are flattering but they’re actually really hard to reply to. What can we say? “Yes, I do!”
They leave us tongue-tied (and slightly skeptical) so we don’t write back.
Try this instead
Don’t go the opposite way and call us hideous.
Try to compliment her on something other than her looks. Read her profile again. What else impresses you, other than her hair, face or body? (If there isn’t anything, don’t send a message.) Find something cool about her, and compliment that. Then ask a question. For example, “You have a guitar signed by Jimmy Page? That’s so cool! I love his music. What’s your favourite Led Zeppelin song? And why?”
I hope this helps. If you’d like a woman to give you advice about online dating, or to check through your profile, I offer online-dating coaching. If you’d like to try it, just contact me.
Good luck!
Love,
Kate Taylor