need advice on which free email service to use

all input appreciated - I have an ebay store and need a free email service I can use to send out promotional emails to my ebay customers who have bought from me in the past. what I need is one that allows me to set up contacts into distribution lists and then email that group without a bunch of clicking and selecting person by person. i have personal accounts with hotmail, gmail, and yahoo and it does not *appear* that any of them offer this function. any ideas or suggestions for me?

thanks!
Hope Valley Girl

Are you sure Gmail doesn't do what you want? I see the ability to create groups and add any of your contacts to them. Then you can just type in the group name when you want to send an email.

Warning - shameless plug:

Check out www.officelive.com -- you can get your own domain name, for free, easy web development site (if you want), plus up to five email accounts under that domain name, for free.

So, for example, if the domain name hopevalleync.com is open, you could have the email address: girl@hopevalleync.com and/or ebay@hopevalleync.com.

The email interface is similar to Windows Live; or you can use Outlook.

This is the group that I'll be going to work for in the new year, so I'll take any and all customer input. :)

PM me if you want more details. (I'm travelling -- currently sending from a snowed in Denver airport right now -- so replies may be delayed.)

thanks to both of you for your input! I'm going to look more closely at Gmail - their functionality is so unusual to me. It's like driving an american car all your life and then suddenly getting into a german one and being confused by the ergonomics! I'm not ready to have my own domain yet - this store is currently in the "experimental" phase. I'm going to give it a year and see how I do. After that, if it's profitable I'll definitely look into Office Live option. Take care & have a happy NY!

DA: Windows Live or Outlook? My cousin's husband works on the Groove applications in Office 2007...