E-mail marketing

Whilst looking for some general hints and tips on producing HTML emails to send out to people who have expressed an interest in JKToys I came across the following website: http://www.mailchimp.com/

I have signed up for a fre account which allows you to store up to 500 people in a list and send up to 3,000 e-mails as part of a marketing campaign. It appears to have some very useful tools such as helping with the design of an HTML e-mail to be sent out and then tracking how many people open the mail and whether they then click on any of the links which you may have included within the mail.

I have had a quick play and think this could be a very useful tool - all I now need to work out is how to get people to sign up to be on my mailing list. I have added a sign up form to the website (another handy application provided by mailchimp) so hopefully as more people visit the site so the mailing list will grow. I am determined not to be seen as a spammer so it is very important to me that anyone who receives our newsletter must have signed up for it.

To try and get people to sign up to our newsletter I am offering the chance to win a 100 piece BRIO compatible train set which I will be selling at c. £37 and which many others sell for nearer £50. You can sign up at http://www.jktoys.co.uk/ if you are interested.