In this article you’ll find some useful online dating dos and don’ts on the “e-mail strategy”.
The first e-mail is the equivalent of walking up to a person in a bar and delivering your opening line. What kind of impression do you want to make? Here are some dating dos and don’ts for Melbourne singles on writing your first e-mail.
• Do not spam. Do not look at this as a game of odds, copying and pasting the same introductory e-mail text into a dozen new windows and sending it to as many people as possible. This is easy to detect, and you're likely to be busted when you spam friends who are comparing notes.
• Mention something specific from the profile. Not only will this assure the recipient that he is not part of some scattershot tactic, it also will echo the give-and-take of face-to-face engagement.
• Don't send an e-mail to someone who's clearly not interested in you: for example, someone who's looking for a 30- to 35-year-old nonsmoking childless woman in Perth and you're a 55-year-old woman in Melbourne, with a pack-a-day habit and three kids.
• Never use capital letters for emphasis—this is the equivalent of shouting. If you really need to emphasize a word, bracket it with asterisks. Keep emoticons, especially kinetic ones, to a minimum.
• Do not send a brief e-mail that asks for a novel-length answer (e.g., "Dug your profile. Tell me more.—Kate").
You can tell that the "introductory" e-mail in your inbox is a form e-mail. There's no personalized "Dear naturegrrrl" greeting, and the curt text doesn't mention anything specific about your profile. Instead, it says something like, "Hi. My name is Ken. I'm a lawyer, but music—and my piano—is what gets me up in the morning. The law stuff just pays the bills. I'd like to get to know you. Let's chat."
This is obviously a case of an online dater who's playing the numbers, spraying tens of potential dates with the same tired faux-personal e-mail in the hopes he'll net one or two replies. And this calls for a dressing down, so here come a few online dating dos and don’ts in case you find a guy like this.
• Don't bother responding.
• Alert your friends who are also online about the potential spammer with a guitar-playing-lawyer shtick. Information is power.
• If he includes you in another trawling mission, give him a clear brush-off so it doesn't happen again: "I wasn't interested the first time. This time I'm even less interested in responding to your transparent spam e-mail."
• If he mistakes your brush-off as an invitation to chat, restrain yourself from engaging him any further.
Jodie Brittain is the CEO of Australian Online Dating website, Slinky Dating Australia - the Aussie-only Online Singles site for men and women looking for friends or serious relationships. Join Slinky Online Dating for Free!
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