Mail Chimp to my heart.

A friend and I are planning an ugly sweater party and wished to send a creative invitation to our guests. We decided to create an email using HTML, and as I was searching for directions on how to do so, I came across MailChimp. MailChimp is a GREAT resource, and totally FREE. Of course you can pay them as well, and I'm sure a ton of additional resources come with that, but the free version is pretty sweet. MailChimp helps you format and track your email. Here is a preview of my invitation.

MailChimp lets you schedule the time to send your message, save lists of friends/addresses/cohorts/enemies to send repeated 'mail campaigns', add images, change colors, fonts, sizing, etc. For those of you who aren't too familiar with CSS, MailChimp makes it very easy to customize by offering lots of palettes, templates and video instructions.

Once the email is sent, MailChimp, will track who opened the email, clicked on the links, or unsubscribed (Mike). Zero complaints, phew! It even shows you in what part of the globe your readers clicked!

Apparently MailChimp has some competition. I've heard from other designers/marketing folk that they've used Constant Contact before. Here's what the Chimp has to say about that:

They boast 200,000 clients globally, including power clients such as Firefox, Mercedes, Canon, Intel, Staples, Dwell Magazine, the Penguin Group, Georgia Tech and the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Of course, to make a truly unique email, you should code it yourself. This will just save you valuable time and energy.