Looking for an easy way to set up an email newsletter? Nourish will take any RSS feed and convert it into an email newsletter. The service is free to use, and relatively easy to set up and send out.

Want to keep customers up to date with your own newsletter?For companies that have a blog up and running, you can take that fresh content and easily package it into an email broadcast. Users register an account and presented with a campaign dashboard; four steps then stand in the way of your escape from the land of newsletter-less losers.

1. Choose a name, subject and to and from name and email address.
2. RSS Feed import - Paste the URL of your RSS feed, and grab posts from a certain date.
3. Scheduling - Daily, Weekly and Monthly newsletters can be created at certain times of the day.
4. Custom design (optional) - if you want your newsletter to better present your brand identity.

Subscribers to the newsletter are imported via a CSV file. When newsletters are sent out, Nourish will provide you with subscribers open rates, click through rates and the number of emails delivered. It's a great free service that has only one drawback, albeit a major one, there are currently only 10 subscribers allowed per account.

LetterPop! is a funky little web application that allows you to use drag and drop techniques to put together very sharp email newsletters. You pick from a set of templates, and you can drag and drop photos and write text, and basically publish a newsletter in short order. You'll need to sign up for the service, which is currently in beta mode, and therefore free for a year. Once you've signed up you are permitted to upload your own photos for use in your newsletters.

The set of templates is somewhat limited right now, and heavily towards holiday themes. This makes sense, since this is the type of web service that will appeal to families for holiday family updates. There are also a number of generic templates, and luckily all of the templates are very well designed and attractive to look at. Personally I'd rather have a smaller selection with better templates to choose from rather than a huge selection of so-so templates.

Once you've created your newsletter, you have the choice of sending it as an email directly to your list of contacts, or publishing it to a dedicated address that you can then send to your contacts. The system keeps a profile page showing your history of newsletters, as well as allowing you to save your progress when working on a newsletter so you can come back and continue where you left off.

If I have a knock against LetterPop!, it's simply that it took forever for my signup to be processed. I suppose I should cut them some slack given that they're in a beta phase, but I was certainly surprised at how long it took. The page after you sign up for a beta account warns you that it could take up to 15 minutes, or you may have to contact support directly. They weren't kidding.