Many people have asked me why I send invitations through the HeyLetsGo system. This page explains why.

Some people have proposed that rather than sending an individual invitation for each event that I host or publicize, that I simply distribute a master list of all of the events that I am aware of. I don't like this idea for many reasons.

First, in my database, you can choose which parties and events you are invited to. If you don't want to be invited to wine tastings, you can tell me this and you will not receive invitations for wine tastings. If I sent you a master list, it would include wine tastings, which means you're reading about an event you have absolutely no interest in attending. With my system, you only receive invitations for the events you are interested in.

Second, I want to minimize the amount of time I spend on these parties. Starting in 2004, they have completely overtaken my life. I've been spending full-time on them, even though I have a full-time secretary who helps me with this social group. For events I do not host, I insist that the group prepare the invitation, which saves me a lot of time. Once they create it accordingly to my guidelines, I simply run a pre-existing query to generate the appropriate names and e-mail addresses (i.e., the people who have indicated they want to receive those kind of announcements). I copy and paste the names and addresses into the invitation, and then send it out. It took a long time to get this system working well, but now that it does, each incremental invitation takes me less than 2 minutes. If I prepared a master list, I would have to cut and paste a lot of information into a master list and then edit it. This would take much more time and I want to spend less time running this social group, not more time.

Third, as a practical matter, my social group would simply not be able to function if all I did was to send out a master list of events. The core of my group are my large cocktail parties — 500+ people attending a cocktail party at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, or approximately 250 people attending a cocktail party at the downtown Harvard Club of Boston. This is what the group is primarily known for. Everything else — the smaller cocktail parties, the Musica Sacra concerts, black-tie charity events, art gallery openings, and the myriad of other events that I publicize — are simply icing on the cake.

We are the only social group in Boston that can assemble 500 people once or twice a month. There are certainly many reasons why we're able to do this — e.g., we've got great people on our invitation list, we give them at wonderful venues, the events are free. Perhaps the most important factor is our RSVP policy — we ask that people RSVP for the large cocktail parties, even if they are not attending. If they don't RSVP, we send a follow-up, then another follow-up, etc., until they respond. In an ideal world, everyone would RSVP right away for the invitations they receive. But we don't live in an ideal world and I have to adopt to the way people really are, rather than how I would like them to be. Every time I send a follow-up for a specific large cocktail party, the number of people who RSVP "Yes" increases. I continue to send follow-ups (only to those who have not RSVPed) until I reach the number I am looking for for that party.

Some people have said, "Because you send so many e-mails, many people pay less attention to each one. If you just sent one invitation for a specific large cocktail party, your attendance would increase." This is an interesting theoretical statement. I love theory — discussing ideas, analyzing them, trying to find the holes in the logic of the other person's arguments. But I love even more empirical data. I have a lot of empirical data. Let's assume the invitation list is 2500 people (it's actually more than that). Let's assume that so far I have sent out 100 invitations to each of these 2500 people (it's actually way more than that). That would be 250,000 invitations having been sent out — 250,000 data elements. From 250,000 data elements, one can derive theories that are quite solid. What I can tell you is that I've been doing this since 2002 and I tried just sending one invitation. It simply does not work if your goal is to get 500 people to a party.

Most people simply don't read the first e-mail you send them. They're busy, they have other things to do, they're out of town and not checking their e-mail, they're having e-mail problems, they changed their e-mail address and forgot to tell you, their dog just died and they are in mourning, whatever. If I sent our one invitation one month before a large cocktail party, about 125 people out of 2500 would RSVP "Yes." About 100 of these would actually show. So I would have a 100 person party, rather than 500 people. It wouldn't be a large cocktail party anymore, it would be a smaller cocktail party.

Even if I was happy with 100 people — and I wouldn't be — the Ritz would not be happy. They give me the Grand Ballroom for free because of the money they make on the cash bar. If 100 people attended rather than 500 people, they would make one-fifth of what they make now, and that simply would not be enough to justify providing the Grand Ballroom for free. So the Ritz would no longer be willing to let me host my parties there. And without the Ritz, the large cocktail parties would not be what they are — I used to give them at 33 Restaurant, and frankly the large cocktail parties have moved into a different league now that we're hosting them at the Ritz.

With HeyLetsGo I can easily track who has RSVPed and who has not. I can easily send out a follow-up only to those who have not RSVPed, which means I am not bugging those who have RSVPed. Almost everyone on the invitation list quickly learns that if they don't RSVP, they will regularly receive follow-ups and they change their behavior, in most cases RSVPing even if they are not attending.

If I sent out a master list rather than one invitation, attendance would be even less. If you are reading a master list containing 25 events, the odds that you'll attend any one of these events is quite low. I've got good empirical data to back up that statement — RICO Soirees is a very good list of everything that is going on in Boston. For most of the events they list, no more than 15 or 20 people from their list attend any particular event. If you receive an e-mail concerning only one particular event, the odds that you'll attend that one event are substantially higher than if it is one of 25 events listed in a master e-mail.

Fourth, I do need to track how many people have signed up for a particular event. If I sent out an invitation that contained more than more event, when people RSVPed, how would I know which event they are RSVPing for? HeyLetsGo is not sent up to handle more than one response at a time.

Fifth, even if HeyLetsGo was somehow set up to handle multiple responses for multiple events all in the same e-mail, I frankly wouldn't like that. In computer science, there is a topic called object oriented programming ("OOPS") — each object should be small, self-contained, and does not overlap with any other objects. With HeyLetsGo, each event is a stand-alone object. If you receive an invitation for an event that you are not interested in, and it doesn't begin with RSVP, you can simply delete it and you don't ever have to think about it again. It's not cluttering up your In Box or your mind. If you want to forward it to a friend, you simply do so with your e-mail package, and your friend is receiving information only about that event, not a bunch of events. If you're uncertain about whether you want to attend, you can drag that e-mail to a "Look at Later" folder and it's out of your In Box. If you want to add it to your calendar, with many e-mails packages you can simply drag it to your calendar and easily add it.

Some people have asked, "Why not give people the option of either receiving individual Evites or a master list?" Preparing a separate master list would take me a fair amount of time, and as mentioned above, I'm looking to decrease the amount of time I spend on these parties. And it wouldn't solve the issue that I need to attract 500 people to the large cocktail parties at the Ritz to make it worthwhile for the Ritz to provide the Grand Ballroom for free. If a substantial number of people opted for only a master list, I simply would not be able to attract 500 people to our parties at the Ritz.

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to telephone me at (781) 647-0136, which is good day and night.