I've been asked for advice on tools to use for sending email messages with HTML formatting in them. These would be newsletters the company sends out to opt-in users every once in a while. I'm sure everyone here gets those in their inbox all the time :). My question is what web page editor (Mac or PC) or website helps in creating these types of newsletters? I briefly looked at Dreamweaver but it seems designed for websites only, not emails.

HTML e-mails is a tricky, messy and awful business. There are many unwritten conventions that often require you to go backwards, and against all of these standards designers should follow.
The only WYSIWYG editor I would use are those provided by mailing companies (such as Campaigner or Mailchimp). Other than that, I advise you stay away from such applications and do it by hand - there is just too much that can go wrong.
Some tips that I learned the hard way:
1) Be explicit about everything, especially padding and margins. Treat your target client as an idiot; make sure everything is exact, explicit and leave the client in no doubt as to how you want your content to be displayed (specify font colours, fonts, sizes, backgrounds for everything - don't let any defaults come into play).
2) Go back to table-based page layouts. Its the safest way to ensure your e-mail will pretty much look the same across all e-mail clients.
3) Use CSS to style, but make them all inline; do not seperate style definitions into the HTML header.
4) Don't use JavaScript.
5) Use a service like MailChimp to test and send your newsletter. It offers a tool that lets you preview your newsletter in nearly every e-mail client going.
6) Your e-mail is always going to look different in Gmail. You'll just need to make sure it still looks reasonable.
7) Aim to get it looking right in Microsoft Outlook. Implicitly, it should look fine in Thunderbird, Apple's Mail, Windows Mail, Outlook Express, AOL. Then go onto correcting your design for those nasty web-mail clients.
8) Despite violating modern standards, make sure your code validates (HTML4).
9) Always link to a hosted copy of the HTML newsletter.
10) Always send out a multipart e-mail message containing both a plaintext version and a HTML version of your newsletter.
Here are some useful links:
http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/templates/
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters/
http://www.xavierfrenette.com/articles/css-support-in-webmail/
Good luck :)

Thanks Jamie I'll take a look at that :agree:

Great post Jamie. Lot of good points to remember.
Mark

Could you tell me which is best provider for sending newsletter . as i have forum with 146,801 member right now :-D fonekat.net
www.ConstantContact.com
www.iContact.com
www.mailchimp.com
Who can be the best choice for me !!!?