What is the preferable way to send email notifications to users?

I can do it both ways but what is better?

1. have some c# code that calls stored procedure in the database. Stored procedure based on some logic pulls all the emails data and sends email using database mail
2. or c# code calls stored procedure, gets all the nesessary data back and sends email itself using smtp server etc.

I just wonder what is the preferable way in the sense of performance etc... C# code is a library that would be a part of the web application. So it's where it's better to put the load, on the application server or the database server? System will not be crazy busy, it's not like Amazon or something. But still it would be nice to create something that makes sense.