Basics: Emailing, and the Approach

Alright. So you got your profile, a nice pic, and you've pimped out your text a bit to make it funny. And you're ready to do the Loop as a daily routine. But, what the hell are you supposed to say when you email these girls?

In this post I'm going to cover the basics of emailing, and the Email Approach. The Approach is your first contact with a girl, and I call it the Approach even though you're not really approaching them only to differentiate it from ongoing conversations.

But before I dish out my tips, let's take a look at some common mistakes all too many guys make when approaching a girl.

Girls get many emails from guys that either look like this:

hey girl your 2 fine. i'd luv 2 get to know u betta. wanna chat on webcam

Or they get this:

Hi! I stumbled across your profile and noticed you were interested in horses. Well I'm interested in horses too, and in fact I used to ride in the summers with my mom before she moved back east. She had 2 wonderful horses named Winterback and Old Chumley. Man, I miss those guys. Anyway I was thinking since we had so much in common you might want to IM? I have Yahoo, MSN, AIM, ICQ, and H1N1. Haha, No, I don't really have H1N1. So, how do you like to spend your free time? I prefer to spend it on nice walks in the garden, sweeping girls off their feet ....

Both examples above are disasters. The first one isn't going to work unless you look like Brad Pitt (and no, I'm not suggesting you use a fake photo). The problem with the first one is it looks like it was written in 3 seconds and the guy doesn't care about (A) intelligence, (B) actually getting to know the girl, and (C) anything except fucking her. It reads like a form letter he's sending out to everyone. And it reads like he never finished the 6th grade.

The second one is too long and too desperate. Although he has clearly read her profile and is addressing her directly, it feels like the guy is putting too much effort into the first contact. He's writing her a long email, going into details about his life, and trying too hard to make a connection with her. All without ever meeting her. Imagine saying all that to a girl you met in real-life as the first thing you say to her. She'd call the Looney police on you.

Emailing a girl is more like a conversation, and you never want to start off with something too long and detailed. In fact, as you get more experienced with Internet dating you'll discover you can use the length of girls replies to you to judge how into you they are.

The Right Way To Do It
Your first email to a girl, along with your photo, username, and profile, is all part of the fist impression you make, and there's an art to the Approach. Here's the basic guidelines:

• Use proper grammar and your spell checker. No texting shorthand (eg: what u up 2?), no incomplete sentences (end all sentences with proper punctuation) and for God sakes, definitely no l33tspeak. Firefox has spell checking built in, so there's no excuses here.
  
• Make it personal to her. It can't sound like a form letter you send out. Look for something about her profile you can comment on, or riff off of.
  
• Don't make it too short. In most cases, a single sentence won't cut it.
• Don't make it too long. A long, custom intro smells of desperation and perhaps even creepy obsession. 3 or 4 short sentences, max.
  
• Be entertaining. Anything humorous, clever, or anything making them smile is great.
• Don't hit on her. You're not throwing pickup lines at her. You're starting a fun, friendly conversation.
  
• Treat her like an equal. Don't give her reason to think you're in awe of her or feel like she might be out of your league. But don't be an asshole, either. This rule is really an extension of the next one:
  
• Don't make any Social Standing mistakes that will put you on low ground. Read the Social Standing post for more info.
  
• End the email with a question. More on this below.

So, what's a good Approach email look like? Here's an example that worked for me:

I saw a girl who was pretty cute and had black framed glasses in one of her pictures. I wrote her:

Hey, nice frames, you look cute in them. Are they modern or a vintage pair? I'm looking for new frames myself and would love to know where you got them so I can steal, er buy a pair. Was it local?

And by the way, I want point out that this is not a stellar approach email. It's just a OK one. Let's break down what I wrote. First off, I noticed her glasses, so it's clearly personal to her. I call her cute, which is a nice complement, but it's not putting her on a pedestal in a you're-so-fucking-hot-my-penis-just-cried-a-little-bit sort of way, so this keeps within the "treat her as an equal" rule. I throw a quirky comment about stealing in there; not exactly a joke, but it really changes the tone of the whole email, puts some personal style in there, hints at my type of humor. And I don't have any glaring spelling or grammar errors. All this in just 3 short sentences.

Most importantly, I also ask a direct question, with question marks on the end and everything. Actually it's two questions but it's on topic so it only needs to be answered once. But my point is questions in your email are mandatory, because you need to always give the girl an easy, obvious, path for writing a reply to you.

You know when you have those awkward silences in dates? Or, you've at least seen or heard about them in movies and stuff, right? Well, they happen because no one has anything to say. But they can happen in email too, but they're even harder to recover from. You can't assume the girl is going to work as hard as you are at keeping the conversation going. You need to give her something to reply to, preferably at the end of the email. This gives her an obvious thing to talk about when she hits reply. The "end with a question" rule is an important one to remember in your follow-up emails too, because at any point she can get tongue tied.

A bit of warning here: asking too many questions in a single email can backfire. It can easily backfire and make her feel like you're pestering her. And it can make a girl table her entire reply because it will take too long to write, even if she's doing the same to you! Remember, even if she's well intentioned and in to you, you cannot assume she's going to work as hard as you will to keep things rolling.

"So Red, why is your stupid email about glasses considered a good approach? How is that going to entice women?"

Great question (I should think so, I wrote it myself). The secret to this is it's your first contact with the girl. And this means that you're not just sending her an email to read. You're sending her your email, your profile text, and your photos, all for her review. It's almost guaranteed that she'll:

1. Read your email
2. Check out your photo
3. Read or skim your profile
4. Decide if she's going to reply to you

In that order. Notice she's not even deciding if she's going to reply to you until after she's checked you out. Because in the approach, your photo and profile are essentially part of your first email. And your profile is where you really dig in and entice her. Why is that effective? Because you've spent hours honing and tweaking your profile text to make it perfect. This is something you simply cannot afford to do on every approach email. If you did you'd only get one out to a girl every few days.

Summary
In short your photo and your profile really are the primary factors in whether or not she replies to your approach email. Your approach email is really just crafted to not lose you any points or put you on Low Ground. Follow up emails need to be wittier, flirtier, and more enticing becuase your photo and profile are old news.

Once you get the handle on the guidelines for approach emails, you'll discover you can write them pretty quick. I've often fired off a dozen good approach emails in an evening, each one unique to each girl, and following the guidelines listed here. You should be emailing at least one or two girls a day while doing the Loop.

A final note for the super shy and those who have NEVER cold-emailed a girl out the blue: I'd have to say 99.9% of the time, rejection from a girl on your approach comes in the form of silence. You simply never get a reply. It's not embarassing, it's not humiliating, and it won't damage your ego. She doesn't go to her friends and laugh at you with them. If she didn't like you, she's simply going to ignore the email, and not give you a second thought.

So don't linger on it, just send it and move on. Even when I was first starting out and really nervous about girls, and super self-consious about what girls thought of me, I never felt hurt because a girl didn't reply. It is really super easy to do, and the more you do it the more comfortable you'll be with it. Give it a shot.