It's now been almost 2 months since I have been part of the Tampa Bay IASA chapter's leadership. In that time we've moved the meeting registration to Eventbrite and have started sending monthly newsletters. (The February newsletter was very late, and I sincerely apologize to everyone. The rest of them will be on time from now on.)
The first newsletter that was sent out was managed "by hand" and it was a major headache. When I first started the newsletters, I searched around for a good email marketing site. In that search I found MailChimp.
They have a free 30-day trial, after which you have a bunch of different pricing plans including pay as you go plans. The pay as you go plans are great for groups that don't send a lot of campaigns or don't have a large mailing list.
The actual content of the email is completely customizable by directly including your own HTML or you can use one of their predefined templates as a starting point. MailChimp manages your mailing list as well as all subscribe and unsubscribe lists. It also handles any bounce messages for you. Not only can you customize the email content, but you can also completely customize the opt-in pages.
I have only sent February's newsletter using MailChimp (one of the reasons it was so late) but, so far, I have been extremely pleased.
If you are interested in finding out more about the Tampa Bay IASA chapter, be sure to sign up for our newsletter.