Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

I have been hearing of this new email broadcast program developed by IZEA, and am given the opportunity to review it. It’s called Zookoda, and it is nifty online software that allows you to send your latest blog posts via email to subscribers. Use of Zookoda is free, so that a big plus. I decided to check it out, since I am seeing growing interest in my home improvement and travel blogs.

You need to register to use Zookoda. It’s like anything else, you need your name, your email, etc. Very quick and easy to sign up. After the verification email, I logged in to see a slew of possibilities before me.

The thing I wanted to do right away was tinker with an actual email and get a feel for how good it will look. Creating an email was extremely easy. I entered the name of the email title (I just called it “New York Renovator”) and put in my RSS feed. Zookoda took my Feedburner RSS url just fine. Everything was so easy!

Next, I took a look at the templates for email format. These were a little sparse, but they still were very nice. There were four pages of Blogger-type templates. This is wonderful if you use one of these for your Blogger blog! Your email will match your blog template. However, I don’t use Blogger templates, but I did think this template was stylish.

I tried out the Zookoda template, and liked it best of all.

If you are comfortable tinkering with html, Zookoda allows you to tweak the template. Or you can even use your own custom template. I liked the flexibility of this. You can also use some of their basic images, too. I don’t like “plain jane” type templates, so these little customizations won me over.

Next was customizing content. I could pick and choose what blog posts I wanted to send. This customization is extremely helpful if you want to send only your best posts or if you want to send an anthology. Zookoda also gives you the option to send emails on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This is terrific!

Finally, Zookoda offers a way to manage everything. You can create mailing lists, manage the lists, view real-time click, unsubscribe, and other activities, and you can even email blog content in text format for your mobile readers. All this is pretty amazing for a price tag of FREE.

IZEA is a blossoming mover-and-shaker in the blogosphere. Zookoda, combined with their RealRank system, SocialSpark, and Blogger’s Choice Awards, is showing the real prowess of this company as they continue to churn out innovation after innovation. I predict they will soon be the next blogger powerhouse of the Internet.

So if you’ve got readers, check out Zookoda. If you want readers, you’ll definitely want Zookoda- this will draw them like flies to honeycomb. Zookoda is clean, classy, and simply a breeze to use and manage.