The Short Answer

Send one short message asking for a meeting, not for the raise. A chat thread is good at getting twenty minutes onto a calendar and bad at everything that happens inside those twenty minutes, so the message has exactly one job: a time and a topic.

Hi [Name], could I get 20 minutes with you this week or next? I would like to talk about my salary and where my work has got to this year. Any day that suits you works for me.

No number, no market data, no case built in a bubble your manager reads while walking into another meeting. The case belongs in the conversation: what you have delivered, what you are paid now, what you are asking for, and what that work pays elsewhere. The reason to send the message at all is that asking works more often than people expect. In a LendingTree survey of 2,049 US adults, 82 percent of full-time workers who asked for a raise got one. What follows is the openers, the timing that matters more than the wording, and the follow-up that keeps the conversation from quietly never happening.

Why the Chat Is for Booking, Not Negotiating

In a lot of workplaces your manager is more reachable on WhatsApp than anywhere else. That is a real advantage and also the trap: the channel that gets a reply in four minutes is the channel least suited to the one conversation you most want to go well.

Three reasons the ask stays short:

  • You cannot read the room through a screen. A pay conversation is a negotiation, and a negotiation needs the other person's hesitation, their "well, the budget is set in March", their counter. None of that survives a text thread.
  • A number in writing becomes the anchor before you have made the case. If the first thing your manager sees is a figure with no reasoning attached, the reasoning arrives second and loses.
  • Your manager usually cannot answer alone. Pay decisions involve a budget, a band, often HR and often a cycle. A message asking "can I have a raise?" forces a no, or a holding reply, from someone who would have said "let me find out" in person.

So the message asks for the meeting, and it says what the meeting is about. Naming the topic matters: a vague "can we chat?" is how people get walked into a conversation they have not prepared for, and your manager deserves the same chance to prepare that you want.

One exception. If your company runs pay reviews entirely in writing, which some remote-first employers do, ask what that written process is and follow it. The message below still works for that, because you are asking for the process, not for the money.

Seven Messages, by Situation

Replace the brackets. Send inside your manager's working hours, never in a group, and send once.

1. The first ask

Hi [Name], could I get 20 minutes with you this week or next? I would like to talk about my salary and where my work has got to this year. Any day that suits you works for me.

If your manager lives in a calendar, send an invite for the slot they pick rather than leaving it floating in the chat.

2. Before a review cycle

The best version of this message is early, because the pot you are asking out of gets decided before anyone talks to you about it.

Hi [Name], I know the review cycle is coming up in [month]. Before the numbers get locked in, could we have 20 minutes to talk about my compensation? I would rather bring it to you now than after the decisions are made.

3. After a visible win

Tie the ask to something your manager already knows about, and name it in one clause rather than making the whole case here.

Hi [Name], thanks for the note about the [project] launch. On the back of that, could we find 20 minutes in the next week or two to talk about my salary? I have put together where I think my work now sits and I would like to walk you through it.

4. When the job has grown and the title has not

This is the strongest situation and the one people under-use. You are not asking for a reward, you are asking for the pay to catch up with the job.

Hi [Name], since [person] left in [month] I have been covering [the two or three things you took on], on top of my own work. Could we have 20 minutes to talk about what the role is now and what it should pay? Happy to put the detail in writing first if that is easier.

5. Pinning down a "let us talk later"

A soft no and a genuine not-yet look identical in a chat. Ask for a date, offer two, and leave the next move with them.

Hi [Name], picking up the salary conversation we parked. Would Tuesday or Thursday afternoon work for 20 minutes? If this is better after [the review, the quarter, the appraisal], tell me which week and I will book it then.

6. The written summary after the meeting

Send this within a day. It is the most useful message in this post, because it turns a conversation into something that exists.

Hi [Name], thanks for the time today. To confirm what I took away: you will check what is possible against the [cycle, band, budget] and come back to me by [date]. I asked for [the ask you made]. Let me know if I have any of that wrong.
"Let me know if I have any of that wrong" does the work. It gives your manager an easy way to correct the record now rather than dispute it in three months, and it reads as checking rather than cornering.

7. When the answer is no

A no with no conditions attached is the one outcome worth pushing on, politely, once.

Hi [Name], understood, and thanks for being straight with me. Could you tell me what would need to be true for this to be a yes, and when it makes sense to look at it again? If there is something specific I should be delivering by then, I would rather know now.

Then put the date they give you somewhere that will remind you, which is what the last section of this post is about.

What the Surveys Actually Say About Asking

Three numbers are worth knowing before you send anything, and each has a limit worth knowing too.

Asking has a high success rate. LendingTree commissioned QuestionPro to survey 2,049 US adults aged 18 to 78 from 1 to 3 October 2024. Among full-time workers, 82 percent of those who asked for a raise received one, against 66 percent of full-time workers who got a raise without asking, and askers were more likely to land an increase of 5,000 dollars or more (LendingTree's own write-up, CNBC's coverage). The same survey found 35 percent of women asked against 49 percent of men. The caveats matter: it is a self-reported online survey on a nonprobability sample, it is US only, the fieldwork is from 2024, and people who ask tend to be people who already think they have a case, so 82 percent is not a random employee's odds.

The pot is small and set in advance. Mercer's October 2025 survey of US organisations projected total salary increase budgets of 3.5 percent for 2026, with merit increases at 3.2 percent (CFO.com, WorldatWork). Mercer's spring 2026 follow-up with 756 employers found what was actually paid came in just under that, merit at 3.1 percent and total increases at 3.4 percent (WorldatWork), and WTW's survey reaches the same conclusion from the other side, with US salary budgets expected to stay flat in 2026 at about 3.4 percent (HR Dive). What that means for your message: an average increase is already planned for you, and anything above it comes out of a fixed pool that is allocated early. That is why timing beats phrasing.

Plenty of people are getting nothing. A Morgan McKinley survey published in mid 2026, across seven markets, found nearly 70 percent of employees had received no salary increase in the previous six months, up from 65 percent a year earlier (Staffing Industry Analysts). That is context rather than discouragement: it means a no may genuinely be about the budget rather than about you, which is exactly what script 7 is designed to find out.

Timing Beats Phrasing

Because the budget is decided before the conversation, when you ask changes the answer more than how you ask. In order of usefulness:

  1. Before the cycle, not during it. If reviews land in March, the budget is being argued over in January. A manager who hears your case in January can put it into the plan. The same case in April can only be noted for next year.
  2. Within a few weeks of something that went well. Not because managers are sentimental, but because the evidence is fresh and you will not have to reconstruct it.
  3. When the job demonstrably changed. A departure you absorbed, a client you now own, a system you now run. This is the one case where an off-cycle adjustment is normal, because the alternative is backfilling the role at market rate.
  4. Not in a week of layoffs, a hiring freeze or a bad quarter. You will get a no that is about the company, and that no goes on the record for the next conversation.

One smaller thing that belongs here: send it in working hours. A pay message at 11pm reads as something you could not hold in until morning, which is the opposite of the impression you want walking into the meeting.

Five Things to Keep Out of the Thread

  • A number in the first message. It anchors the discussion before you have made the case, and once it is in writing you cannot unsay it.
  • Your whole case as a wall of text. A long message gets read on the move and answered with "noted". Everything you would say in the meeting should wait for the meeting.
  • Your colleague's salary. Comparing yourself to a named person turns a conversation about your work into a conversation about theirs, and about who told you.
  • A resignation threat you do not mean. If you have a real offer, that is a real conversation to have in person, with a decision you are prepared to carry out. In a chat it is a bluff with a timestamp.
  • The group chat. Team groups, project groups, anything with a third person in it. This is a one-to-one message or it is nothing.

One more thing to be realistic about: the ticks tell you nothing useful. Two grey ticks mean it reached their phone, blue ticks mean the chat was opened, and read receipts can be switched off for one-to-one chats entirely (nextpit's guide to the check marks). Your message is acknowledged when somebody writes back, which is why the next section exists.

The Follow-Up Nobody Sends

Here is how these conversations usually die. You send the message, your manager says "yes, let us talk after the quarter", and you both mean it. The quarter ends, something urgent happens, and five months later you are still waiting, now with the added problem of feeling awkward about raising it twice.

The fix is to decide the chase date while you still care enough to send it, and hand it to something that will not forget. Two sentences in a WhatsApp chat does it:

If the answer in script 7 was "look at it again in April", the same sentence takes a date: remind me on 1 April at 9am to reopen the salary conversation. If your manager asked you to deliver something specific first, a repeating nudge keeps the evidence coming: remind me every Monday at 9am to write down what went well this week, so that by April the case writes itself instead of being reconstructed from memory.

NagMeLater is a reminder service that lives in a WhatsApp chat: no app, no account, save +1 202 490 9133 and send it a sentence. The first 7 days are free and unlimited, then it is 4.99 dollars a month or 99 dollars once. To set the chase above, this link opens the chat with it already typed.

Your first 7 days are free and unlimited

No app, no account. Save the number, send a message, done.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it unprofessional to ask for a raise on WhatsApp?

Asking for the conversation is fine in any workplace where you and your manager already use WhatsApp for work. Asking for the raise itself in a chat is the part that goes wrong, because a pay decision usually involves a budget, a salary band and often HR, and none of that can be settled in a message. Keep the chat to a request for twenty minutes and a one-line statement of the topic, then make your case in the meeting. If your workplace keeps personal messaging out of work matters, use whatever channel your manager treats as official instead.

What should the first message say?

Three things and nothing else: that you would like twenty minutes, that the topic is your salary, and that you are flexible about when. For example: Hi [Name], could I get 20 minutes with you this week or next? I would like to talk about my salary and where my work has got to this year. Any day that suits you works for me. Naming the topic is deliberate, because it lets your manager prepare instead of walking in cold, and a prepared manager is more likely to come back with a real answer.

Should I put a number in the message?

No. A figure in the opening message becomes the anchor for the whole discussion before you have given any of the reasoning behind it, and once it is in writing you cannot take it back. Work the number out before the meeting, bring the evidence for it, and say it out loud when you are in the room. The one exception is a company that runs pay reviews entirely in writing, in which case ask what the written process is and follow that rather than inventing one.

When is the best time to ask for a raise?

Before your employer's salary budget is decided, which is usually weeks or months before the review cycle itself. Mercer's surveys put total US salary increase budgets at about 3.5 percent planned for 2026 and about 3.4 percent actually paid, so an above-average increase has to come out of a fixed pool that gets allocated early. The other good moments are within a few weeks of a visible win, and any time the job itself has grown, for example after a colleague left and you absorbed their work. The worst moments are a week of layoffs, a hiring freeze or a bad quarter.

Does asking for a raise actually work?

More often than people expect. In a LendingTree survey of 2,049 US adults carried out from 1 to 3 October 2024, 82 percent of full-time workers who asked for a raise received one, against 66 percent of full-time workers who got one without asking. Two honest caveats: it is a self-reported online survey on a nonprobability sample, and people who ask tend to be people who already believe they have a case, so the figure is not the odds for a randomly chosen employee. It is still the strongest argument for sending the message.

What do I do if my manager does not reply?

Do not read anything into the ticks: blue ticks mean the chat was opened rather than your message considered, and read receipts can be switched off completely for one-to-one chats. Wait a few working days, then send one short message offering two specific slots and an easy alternative, such as naming a later week that works better. If two messages get no date, raise it in your next one-to-one or ask HR what the written process is. Sending the same message a third time in the chat is the point at which it starts to cost you something.

What should I do if the answer is no?

Ask what would need to be true for it to be a yes, and when it makes sense to look at it again. That turns a closed door into a condition and a date, which is the only useful thing a no can give you. Then record both: put the date somewhere that will remind you, and keep a short running note of what you deliver between now and then, so the next conversation starts from evidence rather than memory. If the answer is no with no conditions and no date, twice, you have learned something about your employer rather than about yourself.