I use the following code to read in an html prepared file and send it in the appropriate format. My understanding is that you can not use the email_template and use a link instead.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use MIME::Lite::HTML;

$today = `date -I`;
chop($today);
$email_template = "/data/staging/eod/andy/weekly_file.$today.html";
#HEADER
$msg = MIME::Lite->new(
From =>'Admin@mysite.com',
To =>'person1@somesite.com, person2@somesite.com',
Subject =>"Daily Status - $today",
Type =>'multipart/related',
);

#BODY
open(TEMPLATE, $email_template);
while (<TEMPLATE>){
$buffer .= $_;
}
close(TEMPLATE);

$msg->attach(Type => 'text/html', Data=> $buffer);

#SEND THE EMAIL
$msg->send;
[download]

I hope this helps.

Louis