[deathpunk dan]

check out constant contact (roving software in Massachusetts). Great value for the money spent.

The reason I recommend gonig with a company like Constant Contact instead of just sending the email yourself is that CC and similar businesses are almost always whitelisted with the ISPs. Many, many businesses have a hard time emailing their own customers if those customers have AOL, Yahoo etc email addresses.

Constant Contact and other email marketing software companies also provide HTML newsletter templates for the newbies but also allow you to import your own designs, provide ways to build multiple interest groups/lists, lots of tracking metrics etc.

There are better solutions than CC, but none that offer the level of services for the little money they charge.

Just my .02 as a e commerce manager with a good deal of email marketing experience.