The first message to a stranger decides everything: it is either read to the end or closed on the second line. Here is what separates the two.
The reason
The most important part, and the one most often missing. The person has to understand why you are writing to them.
Works: "I saw your comment about choosing a contractor in chat X." Specific, checkable, explains where you came from.
Does not: "Hello, I thought this might interest you." That is not a reason, it is an imitation of one, and it reads as bulk mail.
Which means the quality of your list decides the quality of your first message. Collect chat members and you have no reason. Collect commenters under a specific post and you do — see active users in chats.
Length
Shorter than you want it to be. A long first message from a stranger does not get read at all — they see a wall of text and close it.
Three or four lines. Anything that does not fit goes into a second message, if they reply.
Specifics instead of generalities
"We help businesses grow" communicates nothing. "We run ads for furniture manufacturers" does, and the reader immediately knows whether this is about them.
The paradox that trips people up: the more specific you are, the fewer people answer and the higher the share of answers worth having. The second half is what matters.
The question at the end
A message without a question has nowhere to go: they read it and do not know what is wanted.
Keep it short and easy to answer. "Is this relevant?" beats "tell me about your current marketing challenges" — the second requires sitting down to write, so nobody does.
What kills the response rate
- Opening with "hello, my name is". Who you are does not matter until why you wrote does.
- A voice message. To a stranger, near-guaranteed silence.
- A link in the first message. Reads as spam and often produces a report.
- A price list up front. A price without understanding the task says nothing.
- Fake familiarity. "I have been reading your posts, great stuff" with no specifics is worse than an honest "I found you in chat X".
On volume
A personal message does not scale to thousands by definition. That is a constraint, not a flaw: a small, precise list produces more answers and costs you no accounts. On the risks of the alternative, see why accounts get restricted.
How Neurogram does this
Everything above is manual work that runs into the number of hours in a day. Neurogram does it on your own accounts and without you: it collects channels and audiences, writes comments and replies with a language model, and keeps limits and quiet hours so the accounts survive. See pricing or look at your case.