How to Send an Intro on OkCupid Before You Match

OkCupid requires you to Like someone before you can message her. Once you have, a message button appears on her page, and you can send her one introductory message, called an Intro. It goes to her Intros tab, you get moved toward the front of her Discover, and if she Likes you back, it becomes a conversation you can both reply to.

The order matters. You can't write to a woman on OkCupid until you have Liked her.

1. Open her page and Like her.
2. A message button now appears on her page.
3. Write your Intro and send it.

That is one message, not the start of a back-and-forth. Until she Likes you back, you don't get to follow it up. Write it knowing it is the only thing she will see from you.

Your message lands in her Intros tab. OkCupid also moves you toward the front of her Discover, so she is more likely to come across you while she is browsing.

So an Intro does two jobs at once. It puts your words in front of her, and it puts your face in front of her. When she sees you in Discover, she may already have read what you wrote, or she may read it after seeing you. Either way, the message and the photos work together.

If she Likes you back, your Intro turns into a normal conversation that both of you can reply to. From there it works like any other chat on the app.

If she doesn't, nothing more happens, because your Intro was your one message. That is fine. Women on dating apps leave plenty of messages unanswered, and the silence usually means she is busy, picky or already talking to someone else. Send your Intro, then get on with your day.

This is the part most men get wrong. a dating coach's point about writing to a woman who didn't choose you first is that she is ignoring far more men than she answers. Your message has to get her attention before it can do anything else.

So it has to be about her, and it has to be a little interesting. Pick one real detail from her page and react to it with some personality. One of My openers shows the idea. A woman on another app wrote that witty banter was the way to win her over, and he replied, playfully, that she seemed to have copied her answer off his paper. It was one line, a little cocky, and clearly about what she wrote. She answered in the same playful tone.

Keep yours short. One or two sentences is plenty. End with something she can answer in a line, whether that is a question, a guess about her, or a light tease.

A few openers waste your one shot almost every time:

• "Hey" or "hi, how are you". It tells her nothing and gives her nothing to answer.
• A compliment on her looks. She gets plenty, and it says nothing about you.
• A long paragraph about yourself. She hasn't decided she is interested yet, so she won't read it.
• A copy-pasted line that could go to anyone. It reads like one.

coach is a fan of having a formula for first messages, because it saves effort and prevents clumsy lines. The trick is a formula that still leaves room for one specific detail about her.

My approach is to mention meeting much earlier than most men dare. In that same exchange, his second message suggested a celebratory drink, on the condition that she didn't copy his order and agree with him all night.

That is still playful, and it is not a formal invitation. But it plants the idea. When he asks for her number a few messages later, the date has already come up, and it feels like the natural end of the conversation rather than a sudden request. His aim is to get from first message to number in four to seven messages.

Because each Intro costs you a Like and a real effort, be selective. coach has coached plenty of men who showed interest in almost everyone. When they got choosier, they sent fewer Likes and got far better results.

Send Intros to women you would genuinely be glad to take for a drink, and whose pages give you something to say. If you can't think of a single specific line to write to her, that is often a sign she isn't the right person to spend your Like on.