The Orange County Register It's zero surprise that the Mighty Ducks' Web site is buzzing as the hockey team delights fans with surprising playoff success.

That doesn't mean that www.mightyducks.com is profitable. But an intriguing strategy hopes to keep Ducks fans close to the club well after the last game is played.

When the season started in October, Ducks fans were greeted with a revamped Web site offering required stuff (player info, schedules and message boards for chatting about the squad) plus cute stuff (like Ducks graphics to dress up a fan's computer and goodies for kids) plus some e-commerce (better ticket-selling capabilities and souvenir sales).

Yes, it was an improvement. Yes, online ticket sales grew by 211 percent. But the real curious hook was the ability to let fans get e-mail updates from the club.

This isn't cutting-edge, rocket science. Rather, it's tasty morsels for die-hards who can now get everything from team news releases to notices of ticket bargains.

The Ducks enjoy a strategic Web advantage over their fellow Disney pro squad, the Angels. Major League Baseball heavily controls each team's online presence, so the Angels have modest ability to tweak their site to local tastes. The National Hockey League has a relative hands-off approach.

Thus, the Ducks e-mail news service offers a fan a dozen or so different dispatches from the team. The Angels, by comparison, offer two.

"The goal was to build a critical-mass audience this year," says Ducks spokesman Charles Harris. "Next year we'll explore for more business opportunities."

The revamped Ducks site initially drew 135,000 monthly "unique visitors," Web speak for a solid traffic barometer. That crowd grew to 165,000 by March. For April, as the Ducks' play shocked the hockey world, that number should be about 210,000.

And the Ducks e-mail service? It is shipping roughly 200,000 messages a month, quadruple the pace from the season's start.

"It's growing off the charts," says Jeff Huggins, president of Convergence Direct in Aliso Viejo, the Ducks' Web consultant. Convergence, a 10-person shop that's worked for the likes of Mazda, Wild Rivers and 20th Century Fox, preaches "viral marketing," Web sites that in a sense promote themselves.

For example, the Ducks Might-E-News offers users an opportunity to easily tell a pal about the site's services. It's the old "the best salesman is a satisfied customer" routine adjusted for the Internet.

Certainly, technologically cool online tricks – such as Web sites with intense graphic designs or streaming video clips or radio broadcasts – draw much of the Internet sizzle. But oddly, the relatively bland science of e-mail may actually be the more powerful business tool.

Letting customers choose the information they want – and having the capacity to track and leverage those usage patterns – may hold real financial promise.

For the Ducks, at a minimum, an e-mail discourse keeps fans thinking of the club after memories of the team's best season fade this summer.