[MM3-users] can templates be html formatted?

My goal here is to have as little friction as possible for nontechies to join and participate in an email discussion list. So that means

• HTML formatted hyperlinks in all emails including the welcome email to subscribe, unsubscribe, see the archives, etc.
• no need for a password ever for anything they'd want to do.
• A simple click to subscribe, unsubscribe, see the archives. All hyperlinks.

I've been playing with the welcome template and it seems maybe this can't do what I am looking for (html formatting). I'm wondering also why it's doing some sort of soft wrap with line breaks which is breaking longer urls in the template.