At Faldingworth Live, I never ask any performer to send me hard copy promo stuff or Cd's.

1. We do our own posters, so that we can reflect the best qualities of an artist in a way that will attract our audience. I think posters that just show an artist and a box to write our venue in is just not good enough and IMHO a pure waste of money on the artist/agents side.
I appreciate that some organisers do not have the resources to do their own posters for whatever reason. To get the posters done, I capture the info from the artists website, and ask the artist to send me a good quality jpeg to be used for the poster as well as sending to the press.

2. Our website IMHO needs to be informative and load pretty quickly. Putting flash stuff on the website IMHO is not necessary for a venue. Whereever possible I link to the artists website as well. I also keep a Myspace account Faldingworth Liveand a more informal facebook account http://www.facebook.com/les.worrall?ref=profile.
Gigs are put on local and wider area Diary websites such as Folktalk.
Plus the artists booked put the info on their websites and e-mailsd etc.
I don't bother to e-mail much (too much spamming going on already), but may send e-mails to individuals just to remind them.

3 Word of mouth has a big impact as well, plus Radio broadcasts etc.

4 As far as listening to artists music, I always google for videos or myspace accounts and that tells me enough about the artists. If I am not sure about siomebody, but think I might want to book them, I try and go to see them live first.
If an artist calls me to book a gig, as they are talking I already have youtube videos or myspace up and I listen whilst I talk with the artist. Soon brings you up to date.

I am IT literate and it is a godsend as using the internet etc is so quick and easy if you know what you are doing.

I think Artist's need more of a flash git approach :-) to their websites in order to promote/sell themselves. I don't think that is the case for organisers (just simple websites are enough that are informative).

Cheers
Les Worrall