How To Create Email Newsletter Templates
Sometimes, you’ll open an email from someone whom you subscribe to and whoa! What an impressive email! Maybe you’ve seen one like that and been wondering, how do you create beautiful emails like that for your newsletter/mailings?
The solution is not as difficult as you may imagine. Of course it all begins with having a good design. Mine is simple. I like to keep HTML emails simple so it loads fast and trigger less flags.
Step 1 – The best way to build an HTML newsletter template is to use your good old fashioned HTML editor like FrontPage, ExpressionWeb, DreamWeaver or Notepad (uhuh). Get the design down pat in the editor and save the page onto your computer.
Step 2 – Your next step is to upload any graphics to your web site or a web accessible space like Photo Bucket. I prefer to upload them to my web site because I don’t want images on third party sites to raise any flags with spam filters.
Step 3 – Third, you should go back to your template in your HTML editor and switch out the image references to the full URLs of the images on your web site. This part is probably the most crucial and where most who are new to the process mess up. When you build your template, chances are, your images are loaded from your computer. In order for everyone to see those images, you must reference the images in an online space or you’ll end up with broken images. So if your image references look like C:\\Mydocuments\somefolder\image.jpg that’s wrong and won’t ever work. They should point online – where you uploaded your images to e.g. http://yoursite.com/newsletterimages/image.jpg.
Step 4 – Lastly, save your template again and next time you are ready to write your email, copy the HTML code, paste it into your email newsletter service and edit the text.
Big Tip! When sending HTML emails, always include a plain text version of the email so that those who choose to read their emails as text only or are on a phone to not get a blank email.
I’m also including in this post, my personal email newsletter template so you can see exactly how this all works together. You will see some strange code in my template too. Those are Aweber tags that allow me to enter customized data into the template. Talking about email newsletter are you subscribed? If no, why not? Go ahead! I’ll promise to notify you of quality technology inspired marketing information and help. Sign up is on the right side of this page.
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Lynette – thanks for the tips. I need to step up my email game and move to html emails. I use FrontPage all the time so it is a no-brainer and won’t be difficutl for me. Question though, I get the diff between an html and text email. But what are you suggesting in you “big tip”? Where do you “include” the plain text version?? WITH the html email??
Thanks so much,
Cindy S
Hey Cindy, I’m not sure what you are using to send out your email newsletters. I use Aweber and there are two spots for you to enter your email. The top box is for HTML and the bottom for plain text. That’s where the text version goes. I know this is also possible with Wahmcart there are two boxes where you enter your email message. One for HTML, one for text. In fact, almost all other major email services should have this feature.
<<<<<>>>>
Lynette – thanks for the tips. I need to step up my email game and move to html emails. I use FrontPage all the time so it is a no-brainer and won’t be difficutl for me. Question though, I get the diff between an html and text email. But what are you suggesting in you “big tip”? Where do you “include” the plain text version?? WITH the html email??
Thanks so much,
Cindy S
Hey Cindy, I’m not sure what you are using to send out your email newsletters. I use Aweber and there are two spots for you to enter your email. The top box is for HTML and the bottom for plain text. That’s where the text version goes. I know this is also possible with Wahmcart there are two boxes where you enter your email message. One for HTML, one for text. In fact, almost all other major email services should have this feature.