Bill, I use Mailchimp and I love it. I send out newsletters quarterly. They have drag and drop templates or you can code your own email in HTML and upload it. They give you subscribe buttons for your website and good analysis of both your mailing list participants and the hits/clicks/opens on your email campaigns.
I think the free version is limited to 2000 total subscribers and 12k emails a month. Give it a try!
Oh, and email works for me. As I said, quarterly updates with new images being the primary focus and then I highlight some products, news/events and occasionally will offer a coupon or other deal. I always see a spike in social media follows, and I usually see a spike in sales.