Gumroad is expanding its array of tools with an e-mail-distribution feature that has a bunch of useful applications. They all build on Gumroad’s Update tool, which enables you to write e-mails to people who have previously purchased your merchandise on Gumroad. You can send these e-mails to your Gumroad followers or to former customers. Heck, you can even filter the intended audience according to which merchandise they bought. From their blog:

You can use Updates to make announcements, send revised versions of products, and solicit feedback. And now, you can also use Updates to schedule emails and automate email sequences. In fact, today we’re thrilled to announce three new features that make Updates more powerful than ever before.

Those three features are:

• Scheduled updates

• Workflows

• Multi-file updates

Scheduled updates are a no-brainer. Write the e-mail now and send it at a later time/date. This is a great idea for sending sales e-mails for time to time (“If you enjoyed my book, ‘X,’ you might enjoy ‘Y'”). With Workflows you can prepare automated messages to fire off whenever certain criteria are met — such as whenever a customer buys a certain product. You can also use this to deliver content over time — such as an online tutorial or a monthly publication. And with Multi-File updates, you can deliver multiple uncompressed files in a single update.

Of course, Gumroad already offers a Subscription feature, which can also be used to deliver content that gets meted out over time. But where a Subscription is ongoing, a Workflow can be scheduled to close down after a set amount of time.