How do you get a response from someone on a dating app when so many people are swiping while sitting on the toilet? And yet here you are on the apps, actually looking for love and a real relationship.

Is finding love while sitting on the toilet possible? Yes. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. But you might be going about it the wrong way.

Picture this: late Thursday night, deciding on your weekend plans, you mindlessly open your app of choice, hopelessly swipe for your future fiance or potential one night fling, send out some likes, fire off a few messages, and hope one turns into a match.

Getting the match is one thing, getting a reply after and converting matches to dates is an entirely different beast. And when the match rate and reply rate is low, you may experience the normal fatigue and hopelessness associated with online dating and it’s not shocking that people are getting frustrated with dating apps. 45% of users say dating apps leave them feeling more frustrated than hopeful, with another 28% claiming to be hopeful and the rest feeling somewhere in between. 

Underneath the burnout and the reason why people are still using apps is something pretty simple: people still want to meet someone and go out on dates! They want a conversation that moves off the app, a first date, maybe even a relationship. What actually stands between them and that isn't a lack of desire. It's the reality of what dating app conversations tend to look like, and a big part of that reality is ghosting and lack of effort.

Ghosting isn't just someone deciding they don't want to talk to you. That's the effect. The cause is a different thing entirely, and the two get treated as identical constantly. Most people read a match going silent as a verdict on them personally: not interesting enough, not attractive enough, not enough, period. Rarely does anyone stop to ask whether they'd actually given the conversation a reason to keep going. And remember, you already matched. There was some appeal there to begin with, something clicked enough for both of you to swipe right. Silence afterward doesn't erase that. If you understand what ghosting actually is instead of what it feels like, you can start doing something about how often it happens to you.

Some people approach dating apps simply as a numbers game, which in part it is, but sending more messages isn't the fix if the content of the messages aren't part of an actual strategy. Sending 50 openers a week that all sound like everyone else's 50 openers just gets you 50 flavors of ignored. What gets rewarded is consistent effort behind a specific strategy, one you're actually testing and refining based on what lands and what doesn't, instead of just cranking up the volume of outbound likes and messages and just hoping. Effort and intention here matter.

Your message needs to earn a reply. And the truth of the matter is most messages don't. First-message response rates sit around 25-35% across the major apps. A flat "hey" is the worst thing you could say and the average length of a first message sits at around eight words, which gives you an idea of how much effort most people are putting in. Knowing this alone already gives you an advantage, this is a quite a low bar to beat.

Why "Hey" Doesn't Work For Dating App Messages

"Hey, how's it going?" "You're cute." These aren't rude, they're just nothing. Zero effort in, so the other person assumes zero effort is required to reply, which usually means they don't bother and you may experience some paranormal activity, aka ghosting.

Compare that to a message that references something specific on their profile. Those get replies 2-3 times more often than a generic greeting. Personalized openers can land response rates around 45-60%, nearly double the baseline. That's not a small edge. That's the difference between a conversation and a ghosting you could have avoided.

Good news: the fix isn't charisma or being super witty. It's structure.

I had a client come to me with a 12% match-to-response rate. His photos were genuinely good, better than most guys on the app, but his instinct was to overhaul his whole profile again. We didn't touch a single photo. We focused entirely on rebuilding his messaging strategy instead, and his response rate went from 12% to 40% in four weeks.

That number matters beyond the ego boost. Dating apps reward engagement: the more people respond to you, the more the algorithm shows your profile around. But that's not instant. Algorithms take time to catch up to a behavior change, so the first week or two of better messages didn't look dramatically different from before. He kept at it anyway, sending consistently and sticking with the strategy and framework even when the early results were modest. That consistency is what actually moved the needle. By the time the algorithm caught up, he wasn't just getting better responses to his own messages, he was getting real inbound interest too, and instead of having to start every conversation cold, he could just match off the people already messaging him.

Your Flexible Messaging Framework to Increase Response Rate: [Intro Line] + [Question] 

This is the exact structure we used with my client, and it's the same one I'd tell you to use. Only one thing here is truly non-negotiable: the question has to actually be a question, not a compliment with a question mark bolted on, and it should not be answerable in one word. That standard doesn't change based on what the question is referencing.

The intro line is not required every time, it's a tool to be used when profiles give you nothing to work with but you know you are attracted to them and want to know more. This is exactly where an intro line is needed to intrigue and capture the attention of someone. It makes a lackluster profile easier to engage with, because it gives you something to say without needing any context, and it buys you a little curiosity in a conversation that otherwise has no natural opening. This two-part move, intro line then question, is the fallback for when the profile alone isn't giving you anything. If their profile does hand you something specific to anchor onto, a photo mid-hike, a book on the shelf, a prompt about mutual interest you can relate to, then you can just focus on writing an intriguing question relating directly to their profile without the intro line.

The intro. It builds a little tension, throws in some light humor, and signals you're about to ask something specific. That's the whole job. It buys curiosity before you've asked the real question.

• Everything looks great here, but I have an important compatibility question…

• I'm going to start with the hard-hitting questions…

• Before things move forward, I have a question…

• Just to clarify something, I need to know…

• I've been told the answer to this question is a future success indicator…

The question. The question, following one of these intros could be something as silly as “are jalapenos actually spicy?”  A good question costs the other person almost nothing to answer while still sounding like you actually thought about it. When their profile gives you nothing, four topics hold up every time: food, drinks, entertainment, and aspirational questions about their ideal life. Food openers win for the highest response rate by a wide margin. Hinge's own data shows women are 40% more likely to reply to food related messages, and nothing else on this list gets close.

Whether or not you use an intro line you need to ask a question to increase your response rate to messages. 

What Separates a Good Question From a Boring One

"Are you a coffee person?" is technically a question. It also dies at "yeah." A good question forces a preference, opinion, and ideally a reason attached to it, a stance the person has to defend a little or opportunities to ask follow up questions and test banter. 

Here's the top four topics to use that the data supports, when you have nothing to work with on their profile build need to build rapport:

Food is the easiest category and it's not close. Everyone eats, not many are precious about it the way they are about politics, and it takes zero effort to answer. 

• Do you think scrambled or sunny side up eggs are better?

• Is tomato on grilled cheese absolute culinary brilliance or offensive and it should just be cheese?

• Are jalapenos actually spicy or are we being punked?

• What form of potato would you choose if you could only have one for the rest of your life? (note: if you choose fries you have to specify, curly, steak, crinkle cut, etc)

Drinks work almost as well, and they double as a natural bridge into "let's actually get a coffee sometime."

• Do you believe diet coke is better than regular coca-cola?

• Is a martini an excuse for a stiff drink or a brilliant, delicious creation?

• One drink besides water, for the rest of your life. What is it, and don't say "it depends."

Entertainment and aspirations are weaker performers than food and drinks, honestly, but they're useful when someone's profile gives you nothing else to work with.

• If you could re-watch a TV show for the first time again, what would you choose?

• Would you rather never be able to listen to the same song again after you heard it once or never be able to watch the last episode of a TV series you’re watching?

• Do you think podcasts and audiobooks fall into the same category of entertainment? Or are they too different?

• If you could live in a movie’s world and have the storyline of the main character, which movie would you choose?

• If you had an unlimited budget to build your dream home, where would it be?

• Would you rather see the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean or travel the furthest distance in space? (if you knew you’d survive either)

• What is the most essential luxury you would want to have if you were building a house? (thinking tennis court, sauna, at home movie theater, chef kitchen) 

• Where would you go if you could teleport to another country for 24 hours and do whatever you wanted?

Quick Answers

What's a good first message on Hinge, Bumble or Tinder? Whenever possible, reference something specific on their profile. When there's nothing to reference, fall back on a low-stakes opinion question with a built-in reason to answer (food and drink questions perform best). Skip generic compliments and greetings entirely; they get the lowest response rates of any message type.

How long should a first dating app message be? Short. The best-performing openers run under 20 words: one line of setup, one specific question. Longer messages don't outperform shorter ones once you go past that.

The Takeaway

You don't need to be the funniest person on the app. You need to be easy to talk to. Ask questions that actually warrant a response. If you read your own message back and wouldn't bother answering it yourself, why would a match who only knows you as a profile on a screen?

When you don't even know where to start with someone's profile, use the [Intro Line] + [Question] framework to get things moving toward a response.

Skip the "hey." Ask something people actually are excited to respond to and start a conversation.

Sources Cited:

Pew Research Center. "The Virtues and Downsides of Online Dating." Pew Research Center, 6 Feb. 2020, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/02/06/users-of-online-dating-platforms-experience-both-positive-and-negative-aspects-of-courtship-on-the-web/.

"First Messages: Dating's Untapped Engagement Goldmine." Dating Industry Insights, www.datingindustryinsights.com/resources/consumer-insights/psychology-first-message-guide-tips.

"10 Surprising Online Messaging Statistics." DatingNews.com, 13 May 2025, www.datingnews.com/industry-trends/online-messaging-statistics/.

"How to Send the Perfect First Message Online Dating." VIDA Select, 3 Apr. 2026, www.vidaselect.com/online-dating-first-message.

Best First Message on Dating Apps: Examples and Templates (2026).” OnLuxy, 4 Feb. 2026, updated 23 Sept. 2026, millionairedating.onluxy.com/best-first-message-on-dating-app.html.