Should You Say Hi as Your First Message on a Dating App?

Not on its own. A bare "hi" hands her the whole job of starting the conversation, and a woman with a full inbox will skip it. It is fine as a greeting that carries a specific line, or as a reply when she said hi first. Whatever you open with, the message that gets answered is short, light and about something on her page.

A first message has one task. It gives her a reason to answer. "Hi" gives her nothing to react to, so she has to decide what to say, and most women will not do that for a stranger.

a dating coach calls the first text in online dating the place where dreams are made or broken, because it decides whether she ever writes again. His method starts from her profile, not from a greeting. When he matches, he scrolls her page and looks for something unusual he can comment on, and tease if he can.

There are three cases where it is a perfectly good word.

If she wrote "hi" first, answer what she said. Do not send "hi" back. Add one specific thing you noticed on her page and leave her something to answer.

If you are opening with a name and a line, "Hi Dana" at the start is just manners. The line after it is what she reads.

If she liked one of your prompts and sent nothing else, treat the like as her message and reply to it. coach keeps a prepared answer for each of his prompts, because the same women tend to like the same prompt. He suggests starting a reply to a like with a quick thanks, such as "thanks, you don't seem so bad yourself," and then adding a line.

My rule of thumb is that shorter is better, and that it is better to comment on a prompt than a photo, because it comes across as more genuine and less superficial. There are exceptions, but it is a good place to start.

One of his examples shows the idea. Her prompt said the way to win her over is witty banter and intelligent conversation. He wrote that he felt she had copied off his paper for this test. It is short, it teases, and it is clearly about her.

You can build your own the same way. If her prompt says she will fight you for the last slice of pizza, "Define fight, and who else is invited?" gives her something to answer. If her photo shows a dog on a boat, ask who is the captain.

coach looked at four messages that worked and found the same four traits in all of them.

They were light and short, with a little wit rather than a lot. They were about the two of them meeting, so they did not read like small talk about someone's day. They were personal to her, even when copied and pasted, because each one pointed at something she herself had put on her page. And they showed him in a positive frame, as the man who is choosing, not the man waiting to be chosen.

A plain greeting has none of the four.

After she answers, keep the chat short and move toward meeting. My advice is to bring up the idea of plans before the final message, so the invitation does not arrive from nowhere after pages of unrelated chat.

Once she is warm, suggest a place and a day, then ask for her number so you can sort the details. A woman who has chatted for a few lines and agreed to a simple plan is a woman who shows up.

If a greeting alone has never worked for you, the greeting is not the main problem. The fix starts with the page she sees before your message arrives. Look at your photos and prompts first, then your opener.

Test one change at a time. Send ten messages built from her page, count the replies, and compare them with what the plain greeting got. The numbers will show you what to keep.