Thanks for your kind words :)
Itch will send emails about updates, but I think that's only for large announcements rather than every minor patch.
In 1.0-18, I added an in-game notification that will appear in the main menu when a new version is available. The first time you run the game with 1.0-18 or newer, you should see a prompt asking if you'd like to allow to the game to check for new versions. This can be changed in the System Settings menu at any time.
Alternatively, Itch has its own downloader/updater client that you can use. There's more information on that over here.
Hope that helps!