Many newsletter publishers find creating newsletter templates such a formidable task. They think it is impossible for them to do on their own. Therefore, they tend to hire professional designers to create templates for them. Other publishers, who cannot afford paying for a professional designer, use free readymade templates. However, what these publishers do not realize is that working out a professional newsletter design is quite simply if you put your mind to it. There are only a few basic things that you need to learn before you can create your own email newsletter templates.
The first step is to download an HTML editor which you are going to use to format your template; the template you are going to create is an HTML format. There are two major free HTML editors which I recommend Nvu and KompoZer. A commercial alternative is Dreamweaver. Whichever editor you use will do. You may also download a free readymade HTML template and customize it instead of creating one from scratch.
In our demonstration here, we are going to pretend to be creating one from scratch. Open your editor and create a new blank template. You can do by selecting ‘new’ from the drop-down menu. Now, we need to divide our blank template into two sections or columns. The left-hand column represents the main content section whereas the right-hand one assumes the function of a sidebar. To create these two sections, we will simply insert two tables and place them next to each other. The tables must be resized so that the main content section occupies two thirds of the template area.
Adding a header is just as easy. All we need to do is to insert a table at the top of the template. The header may contain your newsletter title or it can have a custom header in the form of an image. A footer can be create in the same fashion. This was a brief and simple demonstration of how to design newsletters.