If Gutenberg were alive today he would be in publishing 
heaven! Forget the printing press, the web has fast-forwarded 
self-publishing in ways that are evolving so rapidly it's 
becoming difficult to integrate technology and process to 
leverage the opportunities. Any company, regardless of their 
size and marketing resources should be publishing an opt-in 
e-mail newsletter - it's a very low cost way to build community 
with customers, keep suppliers/partners/other informed and 
generate new business. 

How do you get started? You must decide up front if you have 
the marketing expertise to develop your "newsletter creative" 
in-house and how you want to manage the distribution of your 
newsletters. Many companies turn to agencies/marketing services 
firms to help them develop the actual newsletter creative and 
also outsource part of the process to ASP (Application Service 
Providers), who handle all facets of the list distribution, 
signup and ongoing management. 

Content format can be critical to the effectiveness of your 
newsletter - we typically don't recommend HTML (text with 
images/graphics embedded) format unless our client's product 
or service is very consumer-focused. Plain old text is not as 
glamorous as HTML but it's a lot more effective in most cases - 
people want information, not fancy eye candy that's appealing 
to marketing geeks - keep your message, simple, to the point 
and with customer success stories or references when/where you 
can to drive credibility. 

It's relatively simple to use a Word processor with a mail 
merge program to integrate the addresses (depending on the 
volume) with your message and then send out via your ISP. But, 
doing it in house can be very time consuming - you have to deal 
with inbound requests for people who want to be added to your 
list,  "unsubscribes" (people who want to be deleted) and 
integrate your web site into the process, so people can 
automatically sign up with a back end auto-responder 
(automatic message) that confirms their sign up. 

Most companies utilize an Application Service Provider 
("ASP") to outsource the list hosting, signup and unsubscribe 
management processes and web site integration - typical costs 
are under $50. per month based upon your number of subscribers 
(on average up to 10-30K), frequency of your newsletter 
mailing (rule of thumb would be 2-4 times per month) and other 
specialized features, such as bounce back deletions (deleting 
any e-mails that have a "bad address") and making the HTML 
code available with a graphic to sign up people directly from 
your web site.  Be forewarned, most list hosting providers 
tell you up front they reserve the right to delete your account 
if they catch you spamming thousands of people whose e-mail 
addresses were not "opted in" (given to you with permission 
to market to them).

What do you want to look for in an ASP List Hosting Provider? 
You want great customer service, an online interface that 
enables you to easily manage the process, the ability to 
easily to cut and paste your text (newsletter copy), instant 
distribution of your newsletter and the ability to know at a 
glance how many subscribers you have on an ongoing basis and 
the number of new subscribers and unsubscribers. 

There are lots of list hosting companies out there - I'd 
recommend including two on your short list. One of the oldest, 
most well established companies that has consistently won rave 
reviews for excellence in customer service is Sling Shot Media, 
LLC www.listhost.net - they've been hosting since 1998 (ancient 
in web time) and offer a wide range of consulting services 
related to all aspects of newsletter marketing. The other 
company to check out would be Microsoft's bCentral Services 
www.bcentral.com which offers list hosting as one of its 
services. I can't give them rave reviews for customer service, 
as they make you pay extra for anything more than e-mail 
support which can be a hassle at times. But, their list 
hosting interface is easy to use, works well most of the 
time and they are price competitive. 

Finally, one of the biggest marketing challenges facing many 
small to medium sized companies is generating a newsletter 
subscriber list. I don't have sufficient space in this column 
to address this challenge - but, it's a classic go/no go 
situation; the longer you put it off the harder it becomes,
so get started, the upside rewards are too significant to 
delay!