Don’t do this at home — email is for professionals

It’s so easy to run afoul of the CAN-SPAM Act provisions, and even worse, simply to attract the attention of the guardians at the major ISPs, that it’s simply not worth the savings to try to do serious email marketing yourself, easy as it might seem in Outlook Express. And by serious, I mean as few as a few hundred customers — just $15/month at Constant Contact. A nice roundup of a selection of vendors is in Inc. Magazine, March issue.

You can get as much or as little help as you like. And by the way, email is still the number one activity of Internet-connected people. Spam and all, it’s a very effective and cost-efficient way to stay in touch with your customers and find prospects. Very measurable too.