Hi Woody, so what in particular do you want to know about an email list?

Email is often used by businesses to send a newsletter or special sales offer to a list of their clients or prospects, as it's super low cost and has one of the highest ROI's when it comes to marketing vehicles you can use.

Just about any business can benefit from an email newsletter of their own and typically a free report or other special incentives are offered to encourage folks to subscribe. I'm on a few restaurant lists that provide regular coupons and notice of special events and I get one from Staples and Circuit City each week that usually have advance notice of their weekend specials and sometimes subscriber only deals.

The two main options when it comes to sending out a newsletter are to use a hosted service like aweber or constant contact (both exceptional services) where you pay a monthly fee and they host and take care of the technical details of your list - or you can purchase a program to install and run on your webserver like Interspires "Send Studio".

Personally I think the folks at Aweber and Constant Contact know better than me how to manage the technical side of things, so I have no problem paying a small monthly fee to not have to worrk about that myself. Purchase options like Send Studio will typically work out to be cheaper in the long run, but then it's your job to worry about hosting and deliverablilty issues etc...

HTH - but let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll see if I can help.

Steve Solem
www.ravedesigns.com