John, Then at least mails are reaching to a some guys out there. Try making your emails more effective. Make your subject line more appealing but not revealing. See if there is tremendous change and let us know.
If you want to stay away from the more expensive hosted email solutions you may want to do-it-yourself with a script like ListMailPRO. Done right, on a good host or your own dedicated server, complaints are manageable. Regards
all you will need to make a succeful email marketing is just to know the people you are sending to , know what they want and what they don't .. it must be 100% targeted .. so it can never be spam , and you will have nice results
If you want the advantages of email but not the risk of spam I recommend advertising in ezines. It is usually low cost to do so but your sales conversions will be lower than if it is your own list.