It is possible to publish an email newsletter using only free software programs and free tools. This also includes the newsletter template. There are publishers who pay to have a custom template designed for them by a particular design service. Some other publishers prefer to buy premium readymade newsletter templates. However, if you do not feel that a newsletter template is worth that investment, you can do with free templates. After all, you can always some free templates that are of decent quality.
The first place you may want to check in your pursuit of free templates is Google. Run a search on Google for free email newsletter templates, you will have plenty of websites that offer such sort of service. These websites usually have dozens of free readymade templates that are in a downloadable format. Hang around in their galleries until you find a template that appeals to you. Then download it onto your PC.
At this stage, you have two options; the first one is to immediately upload the template to your autoresponder and use it as it is. The second option is to take some time to customize your free template and make it unique and more professional. The main disadvantage of a free template is its being excessively overused by publishers. Therefore, when you use it, your subscribers could have already seen the template somewhere else. This will consequently make your email newsletter look les professional.
The problem is that many publishers are not capable of customizing their templates because they do not know how to use an HTML editor. This problem can be easily overcome. There are a few good free HTML editors that you can use such as Nvu and KompoZer. To use any of these editors, you are not required to know HTML. However, you will still need to do some learning. Luckily, there are dozens of tutorials in both a text and video format online that are designed to show the beginner around these editors.
After learning how to work with your editor, you can start creating and customizing your templates in them. So to customize the template, you need first to open it in the HTML editor. Most of the templates can be downloaded along with a file containing their HTML code. You open that file in your editor and start making changes to it.
Among other things, you can customize the header of your template. If you have a custom header, you may place it there. If you do not look for one online but if you are satisfied with your current header, you can leave it intact. If your newsletter is an extension to your website, you can use the header of the website for it. However, when inserting an image heard, you should make sure that the image is resized to fit well within the overall layout of the template.
Other things that you can customize in free email newsletter template include fonts, background colors, width of columns, footer, etc.