Cold call emails

I’ve mentioned before that I send out emails to submissive men who look interesting to me. Well, I say ‘submissive men’, but on OKCupid, I also sent emails to interesting-looking vanilla men (holy fuck beautiful eyes was one of those). I know I’m not the only (dominant) woman who does that.

And I know that a lot of submissive men would have this idea that the result of me doing that is a foregone conclusion. The man replies, is beside himself with shock and joy, puts his best foot forward, and we hold hands and merrily skip away.

That’s not how it works.

I don’t send a form letter, I don’t send anything rude or demanding. My first email depends a lot on what’s in their profile, though I guess it’s still somewhat formulaic. If I liked their profile (and I did or I wouldn’t bother), I will send a compliment and will riff off something they said to start a conversation.

I get a fair number of ‘no replies’. I’m not bothered by that, they don’t owe me a reply, but I’m sure there are many people who are really surprised by that. Because they buy into the notion that submissive men are a dime a dozen and all are eager and excited at the amazing opportunity my contact represents. Nope.

I sent out two emails on CollarSpace in the last week or so. One of the men was local, the other was in-country, but not close to me. The first didn’t reply. The second replied in such a lacklustre way that I quickly lost interest after a couple of exchanges and called it done.

The first: eh. The second, though, got me thinking. If someone expresses interest, you still have to bring your A-game. I’m not sure if this guy just wasn’t interested, if he didn’t HAVE an A-game, or if he truly thought he was bringing it, but he failed spectacularly at engaging my interest from the first. His reply to my first email was two sentences in reply to a question I asked. I tried to carry that conversation a bit further, and the next response was again a sentence or two answering another question I had asked. That was it. It was like pulling teeth. And I was done.

If he just wasn’t interested, his behaviour was perfect for putting me off without saying it out loud. If he was AT ALL interested in chatting further to see if there was any compatibility there, he made it very difficult for himself.

So yeah, if you think that women don’t send out first contact emails, you’d be wrong. And if you think that they have a much higher chance of success than the reverse, you’d be wrong about that also.

As a side note, I have a terrible memory, so I do get worried sometimes that I’m emailing someone who I’ve tried to talk to before. And that’s just embarrassing…

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19 comments

  1. Maybe the guys who don’t reply have died of shock at having been contacted by the lovely Ferns! ;)

    I seem to be developing a bad habit of replying anecdotally, and here I go again. I have been cold-contacted by Dommes only a couple of times on relatively obscure websites, with only online/email/skype contact as a possibility, and been disappointed by the coldly offhand tone of the messages. Obviously it could be me reading something into it that isn’t there, but it’s a bit like being spoken to by an answering machine. In one case, I responded asking a few questions to try to find out more about the woman, what she was like, how I could please her, etc., and got the extraordinary response that as a submissive I had no right to ask questions! WTF?

    In your case, Miss Ferns, I have no doubt that your first contact would have been clear, articulate and laced with warmth and humour, both of which come through clearly in your writing. To me, those qualities alone would make it important to me to reply, and to give as much thought to that reply as would have gone into your message, even if I wasn’t interested.

    Doug

    1. *laugh* You know, I hear that reasoning quite a bit: that they are so shocked that a dominant woman emailed them that they flail about and don’t know what to do.

      “got the extraordinary response that as a submissive I had no right to ask questions! WTF?”

      WTF indeed! I do think that the vast majority of ‘dominant women’ who send out cold call emails are actually scammers, and they mostly behave just like that (‘cold bitch uber Domme’) to try and tap into some stereotypical fantasy AND to more easily fob off any actual questions.

      “In your case, Miss Ferns, I have no doubt that your first contact would have been clear, articulate and laced with warmth and humour, both of which come through clearly in your writing.”

      *smile* Thank you. While these in particular were hardly spectacular, they were (I think) inviting and friendly.

      Eh, c’est la vie.

      Ferns

  2. For what it’s worth, Ferns, my experience is the same as yours.

    I’m attracted to well, written, articulate profiles. So it’s a tad disappointing to get a laconic, barely-literate response (if any). Sometimes I wonder if their own personal Cyrano wrote the profile! 8-)

    1. That’s worth quite a bit, thank you!

      In both of these cases, their profiles were thin, but pretty clearly looking for the same kind of relationship as me, so there wasn’t THAT kind of disconnect (though I do know exactly what you mean, I’ve seen that before also).

      And yes to the ‘disappointing’ thing. I find it quite surprising. Unless, of course, they aren’t interested, in which case their strategy totally works *laugh*.

      Ferns

  3. TN is on CollarSpace. I accidentally found him there. His profile is nothing like what I’d expect from him (a lot of it was news to me — that’s a whole other (painful) story). But I’m pretty sure he’s using a pic I took of him for TN Tuesday in his gallery (he does on other sites). If you stumble on him, that sure would be interesting. His profile pic is also very tantalizing. *sigh*

    To speak to your cold emails, I get what you’re saying, totally. There’s a game of “carrying the ball further” that a lot of men (sub or otherwise) just don’t understand. I know my responsibility when it comes to chatting with someone and I never just answer their questions. I answer, then add one of my own so we keep moving down the field.

    1. Oh :(. Wow, yes, painful enough to see TN’s profile, but then finding out a bunch of things that you didn’t know?! Ugh. :(

      And YES to the ‘carrying the ball further’ thing. If there’s nothing in it to entice me to engage further (with joy and delight, dammit!), it just feels like hard work and that’s going nowhere.

      Ferns

  4. If someone doesn’t bring it for a first impression? They sure as heck aren’t going to do it when it comes to a long term relationship!

  5. I send first messages too (kink and vanilla) when a really good profile catches my eye. Lots of if ignores and flakey half -hearted replies like you describe. With the latter category, I do wonder if it’s an expression of non-interest or if the guy is just clueless about how it comes off. I believe it’s the first, I don’t think people are that dense, but there is a piece in the Aziz Ansari dating book (can’t link on mobile) about how the simple formula of “ask her a question or suggest a plan or talk about something you have in common” is *not* common sense to a lot of guys. (Maybe a lot of people but this was just about dudes.) Who knows. I’ll give people maybe 2 or 3 exchanges to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I like to feel like the person I’m talking to is actually excited to talk to me, and I hate ending up on dates where the guy can’t or won’t carry the conversation or ask me about myself.

    I’d love to see more studies on this. Possibly women are more socialized to be socially accommodating, to do the work of making the conversation flow, and therefore tend to be better at it.

    I actually got frustrated recently with what I felt were very one-sided conversations with people who were either casual partners, or prospects I’d been talking. Curious about the reasons for it, I called each of them out in a very direct manner. One of the partners genuinely tried to improve but ultimately couldn’t sustain it. I think that’s just his personality. The other partner admitted he sucked and thereafter faded. I think he wasn’t interested and that forced him to admit it to himself and stop stringing me along. I told the prospect that he was “hot but boring me,” and he said he just didn’t like to talk online, and I faded on him because jesus christ, no one loves this but you gotta do the work.

    My takeaway is people have different reasons for being shitty in correspondence, and none of the reasons make me feel any better about it. So, bye.

    1. “I’ll give people maybe 2 or 3 exchanges to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I like to feel like the person I’m talking to is actually excited to talk to me, and I hate ending up on dates where the guy can’t or won’t carry the conversation or ask me about myself.”

      *nodding madly* Yes to all of that.

      And I also 100% agree with your conclusion. The ‘why’ doesn’t really matter in the end. If they are doing it deliberately due to disinterest, it’s a sound strategy. If they are doing it inadvertently, I’m looking at someone who doesn’t communicate in a way that works for me and who isn’t going to be able to hold my interest.

      Either way, as you say, ‘bye’.

      Ferns

  6. Perhaps, at least in certain cases, it happens that a guy goes to one of those “How to make an awesome online dating profile” sites, and then waist for the magic to happen. Then, when it does, he is unprepared because he couldn’t find the “How to become as awesome as your online profile” site.

    Just speculation, of course.

    1. *laugh* Yes.

      Kind of related: I do think it’s odd when women specify in their profile EXACTLY how a man should contact them. They’re essentially saying ‘here’s how to fool me into thinking you are awesome’ which logically just makes it take longer to figure out that they are actually a jerkface.

      Ferns

  7. I’m still waiting for my email Ferns damn it! But yes sometimes you are indeed flagellating a deceased equine. Between stupid I’m a sub nyah nyah posturings and oh I don’t want D/s I want kinky sex, I think you did well to get any responses of use at all,oh and re “As a side note, I have a terrible memory, so I do get worried sometimes that I’m emailing someone who I’ve tried to talk to before. And that’s just embarrassing…” Spread sheet porn is all I am saying
    Coug

    1. Heh… well, I choose the profiles that I send emails to very carefully, so never really expect the wankers to be in that lot.

      “Spread sheet porn is all I am saying”

      Heh. You know I’m normally all about the spreadsheet porn! But I’m not invested enough in this process to bother. If I must embarrass myself, so be it :).

      Ferns

  8. Over the past twelve months I’ve received 10 items of Fetmail (total), all but one directly related to ongoing threads. The exception was a guy who sent me a friendly “I like your posts” PM.

    Over five years on FL, I have never received an out-of-the blue (friendly, general) PM from a woman. Now, I’m a 50+ s-type man who became partnered a few months after joining the site, so that’s not surprising. Still, the women’s discipline is admirable, especially considering how frequently I post. (And it shows FL is effectively a dating site.)

    My current profile is a kind of protest: “stay out of my way then, fuckers”. Not long ago, as a kind of experiment, I wrote to a woman (in my age range, same country) with a thread comment as an excuse, but really with a kind of intro, saying something about myself, and hey, you sound interesting. And got a laconic response. (But she is “looking”). So much for trying to be social; people can get really focused on “the search”, both men and women.

    1. You make an interesting post.

      When I email someone who’s active on FL (OR CM forums), it’s mostly to comment on something specific that they have said, to compliment their profile or their picture/s vs ‘hitting them up’. BUT my target for this is almost exclusively single submissive men, so it’s easily argued that despite my stated intent, I’m still ‘hunting’.

      I don’t expect a ‘dating-possibility’ in all of those instances, but it’s pretty rare that I will cold-email a man who is attached, or a woman. One reason is because I assume that a single man will be more open to responding, but the main one is that I enjoy the potential of interactions. Because ‘you never know’.

      Normally those exchanges go nowhere, peter out after a few emails, but every now and then I hit a gem, even if it’s not a romantic connection. I am lucky to know a fabulous male sub in the UK who has been a confidant and really good friend now for some 6 years after I cold-emailed him on CollarMe because of his forum activity there. So yeah, sometimes…

      Either way, if someone who has NO partner potential contacts me, I will invest much LESS in the interaction so they have to work MUCH harder to keep my attention. Why? Because I’m not interested in cultivating a lot of casual friends (be it email, or real life), so unless there is something special about our interaction that makes me excited to reply, I’m generally not that interested.

      Ferns

    2. Heh… JUST as I finished writing that reply, I got a FL mail from someone I cold-emailed a year ago with a compliment (short exchange that petered off).

      I just looked at his profile: he’s married.

      So it *could* be that he didn’t have that on his profile then, or maybe I’m less rigid on who I contact than I thought.

      Ferns

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