I need to put together an ad to email to customers. I've looked up ways to put it together and send it out, but I think a lot of what I'm seeing is more complicated than what it has to be. (Of course, I've been wrong about this before....) Any suggestions about how to go about embedding or inserting an image into an email?

If it's just about inserting an image, hasn't your mail programme an 'insert' option (I don't mean 'attach') with which you can insert an image?

Amy, you can make it really easy on yourself and use a newsletter program. It will handle the subscribe/unsubscribe for you, store your database and design-wise, there's no coding involved. This one is free if you're sending less than 12000 emails per month (and up to 2000 subscribers):

http://mailchimp.com/

Actually, sending an email that just contains an image and no, or very little text, has a big chance of being marked as spam. Can remember some years ago when a lot of spammers were using small images, it is very rare to see one of those now.

Mail Chimp is really a good one. I help one of my clients who use constant contact, a paid solution, but the value is their customer service is excellent and will walk you step-by-step through the process...and the interface is awesome.