Comments on: Zookoda – New Email Newsletter System

By: Kshitij Sharma

Kshitij Sharma — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:00:00 +0000

Hi,
I understand that your post and messages are from March 2006 and this is more than a year but I would like to share some experiences with Zookoda.

I started publishing my monthly newsletter with Zookoda and my experience has been fairly bad. The recurring broadcast scheduler almost never works. The feed is never refreshed automatically and almost all the time I have tried to set a recurring broadcast, I keep getting an error – ‘The broadcast “Astrology Broadcast” scheduled for 01 Jun 2007 12:00 PM was NOT set due to the recurring criteria not being met.”
I wrote to Zookoda multiple times, but to no avail. Seems like breaking the head against a wall.

By: Gaurav Sharma - A Weird Soul » Blog Archive » Zookoda

Gaurav Sharma - A Weird Soul » Blog Archive » Zookoda — Sun, 28 May 2006 07:41:57 +0000

[...] I read about Zookoda at problogger. I investigate more about RSS 2 Email services and found this helpful link. I think I would have liked Yutter too, but I already had signed up w/ Zookoda, so I used it for one of my upcoming blogs. [...]

By: Retire Young and Wealthy » Zookoda newsletter

Retire Young and Wealthy » Zookoda newsletter — Thu, 11 May 2006 12:37:29 +0000

[...] On a suggestion of Problogger I have signed up with Zookoda. [...]

By: EfficiencyLab Blog » Blog Archive » Blog or Email Newsletter - How About Both?

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 00:40:48 +0000

[...] When we set up this blog, one of our main must-haves was a way for people to be able to get updates by email. There are actually quite a few services that provide a way to do this. Some were too basic for our needs. We wanted to find a few services that would meet the needs of a variety of different clients, so we could offer the service that best fit what our client was looking for. That included us. We started by reading what others were saying and using, particularly those bloggers we read regularly. [...]

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 04:47:37 +0000

Kashif – Not sure what happened but Zookoda is alive and well @ http://www.zookoda.com – click on register to sign-up

By: Kashif Aziz

Kashif Aziz — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 14:22:15 +0000

It seems that Zookoda has not opened for all countries as yet. When I tried to get registered, I got the message to contact them through email.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 06:43:34 +0000

FeedBLitz just introduced a range of new click-through analytics – see http://feedblitz.blogspot.com/2006/03/real-time-click-tracking-charting-and.html They offer detailed looks at *which* links were clicked on, not just N per email. Open rates are subject to all sorts of problems (filters on images, text only readers etc.) And FeedBlitz reports on the number of subscribers you have in real time – and whether they’re good, undeliverable and more.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 23:22:30 +0000

Jeff – yep you can from my understanding.

you can choose the ‘new post’ option and write something as long as you like. This can be in addition to the RSS imported posts or completely by itself.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 15:26:04 +0000

Darren,

Using Zookoda, can I go about sending out a newsletter-only email that does not include a blog post (or RSS feed)? I’d like blog readers to be able to sign up for additional info that isn’t posted on my blog. And if I’m not importing from an RSS feed, am I still limited to 750 characters?

Also, any tips on setting up the email template to resemble my blog template? I’m having trouble getting it to look the same, but I want it to look like my blog the way your newsletter looked like your site.

Thank you!

By: Leon

Leon — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 10:04:49 +0000

They seem to limit the max number of characters in every post to 750 when importing content from a RSS feed. Not very good, especially when a post has image html at the beginning.

By: John Evans (Syntagma)

John Evans (Syntagma) — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:22:07 +0000

Very impressive, like reading Problogger itself … almost. One question though, doesn’t it lose some of the intimacy of the plain text newsletter? Plain text makes the experience different and more “conspiratorial”. Glossy brochure-style publications are often thrown away as junk mail in real life because you expect the hard sell. Plain text enters the consciousness by another door. 2c.

By: Jason Clark

Jason Clark — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 07:46:26 +0000

Top tip again, thank you Darren.

By: Dave Starr

Dave Starr — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 06:05:01 +0000

Glad you clarified the email confusion, Darren. I wanted to give feedback but figured that probably wasn’t the right address.

I was very favorably impressed with the newsletter in it’s new form. Although there are many (sometimes rabid) plain text advocates out there I far, far prefer a good looking html product like that and I know I’m not alone. I’ll definetely be looking at them myself … press on

By: alan

alan — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 05:43:23 +0000

driving readers from a client app to the blog page has got to be a good thing!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 04:53:11 +0000

Darren, I just spent an hour yesterday looking for a free newsletter just like this, even reviewing your old “I’ll show you mine” post with the WordPress plugins. This is great and I can’t wait to check it out further, thanks so much for pointing me that direction.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 04:20:11 +0000

Hart – the banner was actually one that the Zookoda people came up with on the template they kindly put together for me as a demo. I think they’ve since fixed it up.

In future editions I’ll probably use the space to highlight a project I’m working on or even to sell an ad spot to a sponsor.

By: Eric Giguere

Eric Giguere — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 03:42:08 +0000

If you're using AWeber (aff link) as you mailing list provider, they have a neat "Feed Broadcaster" feature that converts RSS entries into individual emails that then get broadcast to the subscribers. Very neat and useful. Not that I'd subscribe to AWeber just for that, but if you're already running a newsletter or something....

By: HART (1-800-HART)

HART (1-800-HART) — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 02:30:20 +0000

Hi Darren .. A few comments about the newsletter…
- um … isn’t it .. discerned ? (not deserned) but I like the new tagline
- I do like the frontpage look of the topics as you scroll down. You are my first Zookoda – do all newsletters look like that?
- The newsletter counted 6.0 out of 10 in my Spamnix and was classified as spam … perhaps a warning to watch for this by your readers?
- I can think of about twenty more positive and negative nitpicks but, that’s not what newsletters should be about, right? I got it. It had content. Now I’m here! Pure Success :) Now .. did those kooky URL links tell you what my IP was and which links I clicked? :D

By: Kingsley Tagbo [Web Analytics Blog]

Kingsley Tagbo [Web Analytics Blog] — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 02:06:23 +0000

It does look very promising.

How do these folks intend to make their money back?

By: Kingsley Tagbo [Web Analytics Blog]

Kingsley Tagbo [Web Analytics Blog] — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 02:05:36 +0000

Darren:

I didn’t notice that. Thanks for pointing it out.