I maintain a small web site and people can send an email to request information about new events. I would like to automate the process of updating people about new events via email. Is there some easy existing software package to do this? Where I can configure events with a date/description/etc... and have mails get sent automatically?

The alternative is to build a MySql database and have some python script in a cron job that does it. I'd like to know if this is a solved problem though.

I'm running on a shared host (dreamhost if it matters)