the column (less any padding you have on the cell). A spacer gif is a transparent gif measuring 1 pixel x 1 pixel. If you use mailchimp you can use css in the header to build your templates as mailchimp converts the styles to inline styles which will render properly at runtime, this saves a huge amount of time when creating the emails and is easier to modify should you encounter any problems. No background images, background colours are good. Best of look. Also mailchimp offers a free service which is ample for most small business needs, and gives you a lot of the essentials, of course if you want more you have to pay! also mailchimp have just bought a really simple cut down email newsletter tool http://www.tinyletter.com/ all free and great for simple bulk emails. Thanks, Christopher, some good tips there. I use MailChimp, but when I do I tend to build the emails in their visual editor. I always wondered why they put styles in the head, but now I know how they get away with it! I agree with you about avoiding nested tables apart from the first one. When you're looking at the HTML with tables within tables within tables -- it gets really confusing! Thanks Rob, Just heard that Microsoft are planning to wipe out IE7 as well as IE6 by introducing auto updates, so that the standard will be IE8, which is great for developers. This means that anyone using XP and above