Email Newsletter Templates: HTML

Posted by Nick Niesen on November 1st, 2010

Looking for free HTML newsletter templates to send by email?

If you can find one that works for you, it's a great idea. You'll save time and money, and perhaps get a better design than you would if you created your own.

A number of online sites do offer free HTML email templates, and to find them just type in the phrase "free templates" or variations at any major search engine or directory. Follow the links and take a look at what's offered.

In many cases, you'll find that the designers hope to upsell you to a paid version of the template with more features, and that's okay. Without those paid versions, there won't be free templates for long. The best bet is to work with a free version first, and if it meets your basic needs, then upgrade to the paid version when the time is right for you.

In addition to finding a design you like, you'll also need to play around with the template to make sure you can work with it easily and effectively. In my experience, some otherwise fine free templates are too difficult to work with, and therefore out of contention.

And, plan on spending a few hours looking for, and testing, templates. In addition to the existence of many sites, there's also time needed to download the code and play around with it. When we do this, of course, we begin to wonder if perhaps a low-cost template might be a better idea than a free template, and that widens the scope again.

Now, if you didn't find a template that fits your vision for your newsletter, you can look for examples among other newsletters. Subscribe to a number of newsletters that serve the same target audience as you do, and see what they're doing. You can find other newsletters by doing a search for "newsletter directory" in one of the search engines.

Use one of those designs as a starting point. You can either do the design yourself, or hire a web designer to create one for you. Please note: I did say use these designs as a starting point. If you take someone else's design without permission, that could be construed as theft, and be far more trouble than developing your own design.