Since becoming a member of PayPerPost, I’ve learned that they recently acquired a company called Zookoda. Zookoda is a 100% free email marketing application made for bloggers in addition to other content providers that have RSS/atom feeds.

The process is simple. Once you’re registered on the website, only a few quick seamless steps are required to get you started:

1. Create an email list,
2. Create a subscription form,
3. Create email newsletters, (which can be snippets automatically imported from your feed), and
4. Create broadcasts.

Creating an email list. Several email lists can be created per account. If you’re just getting started, you’re likely to only create one for your blog audience, as I did to get started.

Creating a subscription form. To create a subscription form, only a few pieces of information are required. A unique name is needed to differentiate between your forms. A description field is available to help remind you about the details of a form as necessary. Each form is associated with an email list as created in the first step such that Zookoda knows how to organize your list members. A custom confirmation landing page URL can be provided, but Zookoda offers a basic default page as well. Email settings including from name, address, and subject must be provided, and there is the option to modify the default email body text. Finally, a subscribed landing page URL must be provided, with Zookoda offering a default yet again.

At first, I was a bit confused about the difference between the confirmation landing page and the subscribed landing page. After a moment, I understood that the subscription process works in the same manner as the Zookoda member registration process, which I found to be more long-winded (and as such a bit annoying) than it could have been. Basically, readers subscribing to your email list will have to verify that the email address is theirs by clicking on a confirmation link.

While this may prevent false sign-ups that end up getting your emails marked as spam in free email services like Yahoo! Mail and GMail, it makes it more difficult for readers to join. I think this could have a detrimental effect on the potential of the service as opposed to comparable pay services such as AWeber.

Creating an email newsletter. Creating your email newsletter is a simple two-step process. Like creating a subscription form, a name and description is required differentiate among emails. For blogs that use special characters, a character set can be selected; otherwise, the default option can be left as is. What’s especially interesting is that this screen will allow you to import your RSS feed for automated email delivery to your subscribers. The feed can be truncated to entice readers to visit your site in order to read the blog post in its entirety. If you choose to leave the feed blank, an email can be created manually and associated with a specific blog post.

The second step of the email newsletter creation involves the selection of a template for displaying your feed snippets. Templates are currently derived from Blogger with a couple choices from Zookoda as well. If you find that none of the templates satisfy your desires, there is also the opportunity to create a custom template.

Creating broadcasts. Creating a broadcast is where everything finally comes together. This is the screen where you tie an email to a mailing list. You must provide important information regarding the sender’s display name and email address, the subject of the email, when the email should be delivered, and whether or not it should be recurring. There is also a useful option for tracking Web links in order to track click-through and open rates in Zookoda’s reporting screens.

It is important to note that you will not be able to complete a broadcast until your sender details have been approved. Zookoda provides a warning message when first attempting to create a broadcast prior to approval stating that a message cannot be broadcast so as to prevent spam. This means you won’t be able to jump right in completely head first, but it will give you time to prepare your broadcasts before displaying the subscription form on your blog.

The end product. When all is said and done, implementing your subscription form into your blog is rather simplistic. Zookoda provides a JavaScript snippet that will automatically your form according to the settings in your account. If you decide to change any settings, they’ll appear on your blog without any extra effort needed since the JavaScript handles everything. Take a look at the end result here:

In addition, Zookoda offers the option of displaying the number of email subscribers you currently have, similar to FeedBurner’s subscriber count image. While I don’t think use of this image will be of much benefit to small-time bloggers with relatively few readers, it could potentially encourage more subscribers on some more mainstream blogs.