talking to your customers
The best way to market yourself to your customers is by direct contact. But how do you keep in contact with hundreds or potentially thousands of past and potential customers? The simple and most inexpensive solution is an electronic mailing list.
why a mailing list?
Besides the nice ability to contact your full customer base any time you'd like, a mailing list can help you grow your business. Sending out electronic information is the surest way to getting the information proliferated. People love to forward emails!
An online mailing list also allows anyone and everyone who stumbles upon your site to sign up for emails, even if they don't need anything from you right away. It allows you access to potential customers.
more on direct marketing
If you don't have a mailing list, I can set you up to grow a list once your site is online.
I use iContact for electronic mailing lists because they're simply the best service and their prices are fantastically low. Your database is stored online with them. iContact is great because it maintains itself so you don't have to be involved.
In addition to having your mailing list stored online, iContact can create a sign-up form to put on your website. This form will let people subscribe or unsubscribe to your mailing list on their own, so that you don't need to be constantly monitoring your list.