Using a template as the basis for your email marketing is a great way to speed up the creation process and ensure consistency across different different campaigns.

A good email template design should take into account a number of important factors:

- different email clients render HTML differently. To cater for 98% of your recipients the email should be coded and tested to render correctly in 11 different major email clients and needs to be coded in a very different way from a standard web page.

- the design should allow readers to understand the core content without needing to load images, as may email clients block images by default.

- the design should be tailored to a specific type of campaign - the format for an email newsletter is very different to a product promotion for example.

There are a number of options for designing your email template - a good email marketing service will provide you with a selection of free email templates that you can add you own content in to, or use as a basis to customise to your branding. This is a great start as these templates will have been well tested (although you need to be careful to test again if you make major alterations) and should help you get a feel for the style that most suits your campaigns.

Ultimately though, allocating the budget to getting your own bespoke email template designed will pay great dividends - it's the difference between having a custom designed logo for your company or one made from clipart. You're investing time and energy into your email marketing and so you should ensure your presentation is as good as it can be and stands out from the crowd - you don't want to look like everyone else!

Your own bespoke template will give you complete control over the branding and content structure so that you can get it exactly right for you, with no compromises and you can ensure that your design, with your content, has been tested on all major email platforms to ensure it looks consistent.