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Constant Contact vs Zookoda

Posted by Paul B | November 1, 2007 .

Everybody knows that a newsletter is a great way of further pushing your brand, putting across affiliate deals and perhaps most of all making some extra money (Well if you didn’t you do now). Creating a newsletter itself isn’t that difficult, the problem is managing the list of people you’re going to e-mail your newsletter to, you’ll need some sort of authenticated sign up process, the ability to unsubscribe and of course a mechanism for actually sending out your e-mail newsletters. Up until recently I’d been using a service called Zookoda for all of this, however somebody mentioned Constant Contact so I thought I’d give them a go. Here’s how I found the 2 services.

Zookoda

Zookoda is primarily a service for delivering RSS content via e-mail (very similar to what FeedBurner now offers). However it is easily possible to setup a newsletter style broadcast by ignoring the feed option and creating your newsletter content manually. The first thing you’ll notice about Zookoda is how easy to use it is. The top menu flows from left to right and if you follow the instructions you’ll have no problems at all. The first thing to do is create a name for you mailing list (the list that contains the e-mail addresses). The next option allows you to create a subscription form where people can sign up for your newsletter, there are not a huge number to choose from but they all quite neutrally coloured so it shouldn’t be a problem to find one to suite your template. You can also import an existing list of e-mails if you are migrating from a different system. You then move on to creating your actual e-mail, this can be sourced from an RSS feed or in our case manually created. Again the number of templates to choose from is quite limited but you can edit the source opening up many more options (there is no reason why you couldn’t link to your own images and create a completely new style template). The final step in the process is to schedule your broadcast, this can either be a 1 off or recurring, obviously if you’ve created you e-mail manually you only want it to be sent once, the recurring options are much more suited to RSS feed delivery. In order for your mail to be sent you’ll need to provide and authenticate a sending e-mail address but again with Zookoda this is a very quick process.

So that’s just about all there is to it, your e-mail gets sent and you then have the option of viewing the stats to see how many people opened it, followed your links etc Zookoda will handle your subscription, un-subscription process completely behind the scenes. I suppose Zookoda has many good points but the best of which being that it’s totally free. Template options for both the subscription form and the emails themselves are limited but it’s still possible to get a high quality newsletter out with Zookoda.

Constant Contact

I took up Constant Contacts 60 day free trial offer just so that I could compare them with Zookoda. My first impressions were not that great, gone was the nice easy to follow process flow and here was a nice looking web page but one that gave me no clue as to where to start. I eventually found the link to an introduction video, it’s a good job too because I was lost before I’d even started. For example the first option you should use to create a mailing list is actually hidden under the 4th menu option, Contacts. A list is essentially a group of contacts that you want to send your e-mail to. Once you have created your list you’ll probably want to give people a way of signing up? Again, rather than being easy to find this option is actually hidden away in the My Settings main menu, crazy! Once you do manage to find the Site Visitor Signup option the process is actually quite straight forward. Now you’ve got your list and your way of signing up you’ll want to create your first e-mail. At this point Constant Contact jumps ahead of Zookoda leaps and bounds, there are hundreds of very specific templates to select from. This and the fact that Contsant Contact is designed as an e-mail marketing platform and not primarily for RSS feed delivery makes the actual creation process much simpler. In no time at all you’ll have your first newsletter ready for sending out. Constant contact also provide you with all sorts of reporting options but I didn’t spend too much time delving into the Constant Contact in my opinion is not that cheap, starting from $15 a month (depending on your number of subscribers) but it does offer a more focused newsletter/e-mail marketing delivery platform. I just wonder how many people will be put off by the stupid menu layout?

What Would I Use?

Now this is the question. I suppose it all depends on what you’re doing. If you’re just planning on sending out a monthly social newsletter with little in the way of advertising then Zookoda is great (and free). If on the other hand you want to come across as a professional e-mail marketer then it would be very hard to beat Constant Contact. Even so I think I’d probably start with Zookoda and then if you see your newsletters generating an income consider switching to a more professional look with Constant Contact. If you can see the $15+ a month as just a small dent in the profits your newsletters are generating then that is the perfect situation.

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5 Comments so far
  1. jackbravo UNITED STATES Windows 2000 Internet Explorer 6.0  November 1, 2007 7:10 pm

    Don’t know…unless there was a substantial difference or I was trying to hold up an image, I’d always go for fast and easy (but not with women…I like those slow, complicated and impossible)

  2. johnson INDIA Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.9  November 27, 2007 5:41 am

    Newsletters are a great way to set up a regular interaction with readers and clients. It reflects the personality and image of our business. A well designed newsletter often attracts the attention of the customers.

  3. Andrew UNITED STATES Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.0  November 27, 2007 3:03 pm

    I’ve used ConstantContact for years for sending regular newsletters, special offers, and announcements. I’ve often recommended them. I have an account for one of the websites I run (http://www.FirstBoat.com) as well as for my job as a marketing director for a software company (http://www.premiseusa.com).

    However, I am going to try Zookoda for one of my blogs - dailyboater.com - because I was looking for a solution to automatically broadcast out my new posts every day (or every week) when I first write the blog post. It seems like Zookoda will do this for me automatically once I configure all the settings the first time (I’m in the process of doing this now).

    If I wanted to notify my subscribers every time a new post was entered on my Blog with ConstantContact, I would have to create a new email that would essentially duplicate what I already did in my blog program (I use blogger). I would have to do this manually. That would suck. Zookoda seems to eliminate that manual effort by pulling the feed directly from my blog, and it looks like it automatically refreshes or goes and searches for the latest post you made. You set it up to automatically send an email everyday at noon (or whatever time you choose). It looks like it will only send out an email to your subscribers if you have posted a new post - otherwise it won’t send anything (I need to confirm this).

    Both companies insert their logo and a link to their service to the bottom of the emails that you send to your subscribers. The only difference is that Zookoda is totally free, so you don’t mind so much. As a paying user of ConstantContact, you can get their logo removed, but you have to call and request it.

    Pricing:
    ConstantContact’s tiered pricing is based on # of subscribers - It costs more than my website’s hosting account for even their smaller tiers, but no host offers the same functionality and access through the ISPs.

    If I get hooked, I may be willing to pay Zookoda a couple of bucks a month to use their service. Their more direct competition (feedburner) is likely free, though I have not checked it out yet.

    Zookoda is a private company and I suspect that Zookoda’s free blog-sending service may get picked up by Google (which also owns Blogger). However, Zookoda also offers a pay-per-post blog service which is somewhat controversial and my fly in the face of Google’s don’t be evil philosophy.

  4. Paul B UNITED KINGDOM Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.10  November 27, 2007 3:07 pm

    If all you want is blog posts delivered via e-mail then I’d go with Feedburner over Zookoda.

  5. Matt Browne UNITED STATES Mac OS X Safari 419.3  December 2, 2007 4:30 pm

    http://Nouri.sh

    Nouri.sh is a simple RSS to email service that lets you easily create blog powered newsletters. In less time than it takes to create one typical newsletter, you will have a system in place to do it automatically, forever.

    Some key features include:
    * Mashup Up Multiple RSS Feeds
    * Support Feeds with Authentication
    * Customize your own html templates
    * Very Flexible Scheduling
    * Insightful Analytics (Open Rates & Click Throughs
    * Undocumented API, soon be released
    * Did we mention it was free*?

    We’d like to invite bloggers to do an honest review of our product. Sending regularly updates via email of rss content drives a noted increase in visitor traffic.

    Contact me for details on a promotional account:
    matt@integralimpressions.com

    Visit http://nouri.sh for a free account