Home → NewPanda → eMessages How-To's and Help Topics → Design Your Own with NewPanda Editing Tools
5.5. Design Your Own with NewPanda Editing Tools
Updated 08.15.18
*Please carefully read our Terms of Use, Anti-Spam Policy and Privacy Policy before sending eMessages.
Whether working with one of our "updatable" templates like Newsletter-style, invitations or anouncements, or designing your own messages from scratch, the following should be helpful.
Feeling creative? You can use our Design Your Own feature to create completely original eMessages and templates. You design at your own risk - unfortunately, NewPanda cannot troubleshoot or fix messages you create on your own!
1. Click the Create New Message tab in the Send Your Messages feature
2. Cllick the Make My Own icon
3. The message editor will open. Here you have two options:
a. Use our flexible interface to create text, insert images, and fancify your message to your
heart's desire.
b. Write or paste HTML using the HTML tab at the top of the message editor.
Be sure to take advantage of the built-in Spell Check feature to keep it professional, and don't
forget to preview your message before sending to see that it looks the way you expect. You
will be responsible for spell-checking and generally "proofing" your message, as well as
testing it before sending to your "live" list.
Notes for HTML messages - PLEASE READ before you create your message in HTML:
- Note that there is no "ready-made" address block, "business card" or other section in your HTML message. If you want specific contact information or images to appear in your messages, you must create them in this mode! (Hey, you wanted to be a designer!)
- Merge Tag and all other WYSIWYG editing functionality are necessarily disabled in HTML mode. To access these features, click on the Design tab, insert Merge Tags or perform other editing functions, then go back to HTML mode to continue writing or pasting your code.
- We can't stress this enough: We can not be responsible for HTML code we didn't create. Test your HTML message by sending it to yourself at many email clients like AOL, Yahoo, GMail, and a variety of webmail based clients to be sure it looks good in each. Yeah, you really have to. Then retest it to be sure it looks good and works the way you expect it to. Then test it again.
- NewPanda cannot troubleshoot your HTML code. It's not that we don't love you, it's just that our developers are really busy designing cool new features, as well as keeping up with the latest technology and doing other important IT stuff, so we need to keep them focused! Our mission is to provide the best eCommunications tools around so you can create and send beautiful eMessages. It's a lot like going to the salad bar - they provide the ingredients, but you make your own salad. Make sense?
- You can find help for your HTML questions from MANY sources (some free, some - not so much) by doing a keyword search (Google, Yahoo, Ask, Dogpile, etc.) for the phrase "html troubleshooting" or a search phrase of your choice. There are many forums available for both Mac and PC. Because different sites are better for different issues, we can't really recommend one site or forum over another.
4. Once you're sure you've proofed, re-proofed and proofed again, click Save & Continue.
5. Create a name for your eMessage. It should be descriptive yet brief (so you'll know how to identify it later in your reports).
Watch the Email Details & Recipients Video!
6. Add your Email Subject Line (required). You can also edit your email From name, email From Address and Reply-to email address.
7. Select your recipients:
a. Group(s) - choose one or more groups to which to send your eMessage. If a particular contact
or email address is in multiple Groups, our system will automatically remove duplicates so only
one eMessage will be sent per email address.
b. Selected Contacts - use the search feature to find and select specific recipients. Be sure to
use the > arrows to move the found recipients to the RIGHT side of the page. This is your
SEND list.
c. Copy/Paste email addresses - add recipients "on the fly". Be sure to add the recipients as
shown in the example: First Last EmailAddress MobilePhone (optional)
d. Entire Contact List
You can select multiple options above, however it is unnecessary to choose for instance, a Group AND Entire Contact List. You don't have to select any recipients now if:
a. You are only sending a Mobile Message
b. You are only sending a Social Update
c. You are not ready to send your eMessage yet
Click Save & Continue
8. To skip Mobile and Social updates, click Skip Social at the bottom of the page and skip to STEP 10, OR
9. If you want to send a Mobile Message or Social Update in addition to your eMessage, use the Compose your Mobile Message page and/or Compose your Social Update page to do so, then click Save & Continue
10. Schedule your message: choose to Save as a Draft, Send Now, or Schedule Delivery - Note: All send times are eastern time. (If you have not selected recipients for your message yet, you can only Save as Draft.)
11. Click Save & Continue. All events will be sent at their individually scheduled times.
NOTE that when scheduling messages for a later date, you MUST activate the Schedule Delivery radio button to activate the calendar. If you schedule a future date, then click the Send Now radio button, the scheduled date will be removed, and your message will be sent immediately. Sent messages cannot be recalled or undone.
A copy of your finished product will automatically be saved in your My Messages feature. If you archive your message before it's actually sent, it will not be sent.
Several resources for HTML Coding are listed below. We make no promises about the information provided and accept no responsibility for content found on the pages referred to herewith. While we want to be helpful, please understand we can't control content on other sites. If you find something inappropriate, outdated, offensive or inaccurate, please let us know and we'll remove or update the link in question.