{"id":961,"date":"2018-08-23T14:20:49","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T11:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/?p=961"},"modified":"2025-11-07T16:07:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T13:07:54","slug":"a-short-guide-to-email-attachments-the-dos-the-donts-and-the-whys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/a-short-guide-to-email-attachments-the-dos-the-donts-and-the-whys\/","title":{"rendered":"A Short Guide To Email Attachments: Pitfalls And Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whatever product or service you offer to your potential customers, you understand that unless you demonstrate its real value, you may forget about closing your deal.\u00a0 So, when it comes to contacting prospects with cold emails, you should think about how to introduce your solution in the best possible way. That\u2019s where attachments to emails may be helpful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, you may encounter some troubles with adding files to your message. Therefore, we\u2019ve created this short guide to explain when this may become problematic and what you can do to make email attachments play their role.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"table-of-contents\">\n<p class=\"table-of-contents__title\"><strong>Outline<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"#trust\">Element of trust<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#reputation\">IP or domain reputation<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#attachment\">Attachment format<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#deliverability\">Deliverability<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#responsiveness\">Responsiveness<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#html\">HTML<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2 id=\"trust\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Element of trust<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Attachments in email may seem suspicious<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Attachments are often used by marketers when writing a professional email as a way to incentivize the user to open an email. But when we are dealing with cold emailing, including anything else besides the actual text content can seem shady.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cold email isn\u2019t a bad thing per se, but attaching a file to it makes it look far more suspicious and makes it more complicated for senders to <a href=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/how-to-avoid-spam-filters\/\"><b>avoid spam filters<\/b><\/a><b>.<\/b>\u00a0 As a result, your email may fly to the spam folder or worse, get labeled by the ISP or mail client as spam, which will inevitably harm your sender\u2019s reputation and hence your future email campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Solution: <\/strong>Do not send attachments in the first email you ever send to a particular recipient. Also, ensure you send your email campaigns only to valid addresses. We recommend using Snov.io&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/email-finder\">email finder<\/a>\u00a0for that.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-banner default\">\n<p class=\"content-banner__title\">Free Email Finder by Snov.io<\/p>\n<p class=\"content-banner__description\"><span>Find verified emails fast and turn them into leads<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-banner__link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/app.snov.io\/register?lang=en&amp;signup_source=blog&amp;signup_page=snov.io%2Fblog%2Fa-short-guide-to-email-attachments-the-dos-the-donts-and-the-whysr&amp;cta_type=banner\">Try today<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"content-banner__img\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/email-verification.png\" alt=\"Free Email Verifier by Snov.io\" width=\"224\" height=\"224\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2 id=\"reputation\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>IP or domain reputation<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Emails with attachments have a negative impact\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bulk cold emails including attachments are likely to result in a high number of complaints. Every domain is identified by ISP (Internet service provider) before it is processed, allowing to block pirate content or adult web pages through the labeling of domains and IPs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A high complaint rate can catch your ISP\u2019s attention, which may flag your IP or email address, and your email messages will either end up in the spam folder or completely blocked. Therefore, email attachments in cold emails can lead to the deletion of your email domain name from a list of reputable sources.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3800\" src=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/giphy-9.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"265\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Solution:<\/b> use attachments only in cases when you are contacting existing clients. Alternatively, if you do wish to attach files in emails, leave them for small personalized email campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"attachment\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Attachment format<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A wrong format can lead to an email block<\/span><\/h4>\n<p id=\"size\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So you\u2019ve decided to use an attachment for your campaign email. You need to make sure people will feel like looking into what\u2019s inside. First of all, your email message in itself must convince the receiver to open\/download the email attachment. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3795\" src=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/giphy-3.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"267\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The problem occurs when a user gets anything besides documents and images \u2014 <b>recipients will most likely decide to ignore any surprising untypical attachment.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Solution:<\/b> It\u2019s best to keep your attachments in .txt, .jpg, .gif, and.pdf formats. The latter may make a great addition to any nurturing email, but they can be difficult to create and edit. You can find out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jotform.com\/edit-pdf\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how to edit a PDF<\/a> easily from our friends at JotForm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you still need to send a file in a different format, make sure you are using an acceptable email attachment format because every ESP has its limits on file formats (for example, look through at <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/mail\/answer\/6590?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gmail attachment limits<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"deliverability\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Deliverability<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sending email with attachment of wrong size can keep your email from getting to the inbox<br \/>\n<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Email servers and clients have <a href=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/email-sending-limits-of-email-service-providers\/\">email sending limits<\/a>, including email attachment size requirements, which depend on the types of email attachments. <b>Exceeding these limits, your email messages risk being caught by spam filters.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s especially true about images. Email spammers love to use images to hide the text of their messages, undetectable to filters. So, if your attached image is too large, you are not safe from being labeled red by the email client.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8477\" src=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/giphy-2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"237\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Solution:<\/b> Keep your attachment files no bigger than 10 mb. Gmail allows you to attach up to 25MB to a single email, but only if you\u2019re emailing other Gmail users. If you need to send a bigger file, it\u2019s safer and generally more acceptable to attach a link to the file on Google Drive. Besides hosting large files, Drive will check the file for malware, solving the trust issue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With images, stick to under 60kb image attachment weight limit to keep your deliverability high. If you wish to learn more about the effect of the file size on deliverability, don\u2019t hesitate to address the research by EmailOnAcid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Also, to improve email deliverability, make sure your contact lists consists only of high-quality email addresses. To do so, we recommend implementing Snov.io&#8217;s <span data-sheets-root=\"1\">email address search into your prospecting workflow.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-banner default\">\n<p class=\"content-banner__title\">Email Finder by Snov.io<\/p>\n<p class=\"content-banner__description\">Find any email. Anywhere.<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-banner__link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/app.snov.io\/register?lang=en&amp;signup_source=blog&amp;signup_page=snov.io%2Fblog%2Fa-short-guide-to-email-attachments-the-dos-the-donts-and-the-whysr&amp;cta_type=banner\">Try for free<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"content-banner__img\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/12.png\" alt=\"Email Finder by Snov.io\" width=\"224\" height=\"224\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2 id=\"responsiveness\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Responsiveness<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unadjusted image attachments may avert users from reading your email content<br \/>\n<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Apart from the image size, you should care about dimensions. If you just drag your image to the email body without thinking much about responsiveness, your user may get your pic shifted or else, which will definitely affect how they\u2019ll perceive your message.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8478\" src=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/giphy-4.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"328\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Solution:<\/b> considering that 53% of emails are actually opened on mobile devices, ensure your image will look as great on both desktop and mobile. For this, size your images with that maximum 590 px width in mind for banners and 530 px for other types of images.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And remember that sizing an image from large to small is always better than stretching a small image to larger dimensions.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"html\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>HTML email attachments<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Files may not be displayed correctly<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An attachment is not just a file: it can be an HTML-styled template with text in it. Companies tend to use such emails for promotional content instead of plain-text emails. However, these templates often don\u2019t load well on every device and email client. Look at how some email clients treat images embedded in the HTML email body by default.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9416\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9416\" style=\"width: 750px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-9416\" src=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/11d739b45a59572c1710f3b4a0d07a9e.png\" alt=\"Embedding images\" width=\"750\" height=\"642\" srcset=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/11d739b45a59572c1710f3b4a0d07a9e.png 781w, https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/11d739b45a59572c1710f3b4a0d07a9e-300x257.png 300w, https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/11d739b45a59572c1710f3b4a0d07a9e-768x658.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9416\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Source: Mailtrap<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Solution:<\/strong> Use HTML templates carefully. Snov.io allows creating and sending HTML emails with ease. To learn more about how to embed pics in your emails, study <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mailtrap.io\/embedding-images-in-html-email-have-the-rules-changed\/#Attached_vs_embedded_images\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this article<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wrapping up<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Attachments are a good addition to plain-text cold emails. Yet, you should send emails with attachments with special care as they carry a list of pitfalls you might deal with as soon as you decide to make your email brighter or more informative.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before you attach something to your message, remember:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">never send the only-attachment email;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">choose to send email attachments to the existing rather than prospective customers;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">keep in mind the attachment format and size limits;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">be extra careful with HTML attachments.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can do all this and more with the <span data-sheets-root=\"1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/cold-email\">Snov.io cold email software<\/a> and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/linkedin-automation-tools\">LinkedIn prospecting tool<\/a> to<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> create multichannel cold email campaigns and engage your leads from LinkedIn and beyond!<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-banner secondary\">\n<p class=\"content-banner__title\">LinkedIn is your oyster<\/p>\n<p class=\"content-banner__description\">Take advantage of the endless lead generation opportunities and business growth with Snov.io<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-banner__link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/app.snov.io\/register?lang=en&amp;signup_source=blog&amp;signup_page=snov.io%2Fblog%2Fa-short-guide-to-email-attachments-the-dos-the-donts-and-the-whysr&amp;cta_type=banner\">Start automating now<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"content-banner__img\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Icon-1-opt-2.png\" alt=\"LinkedIn is your oyster\" width=\"224\" height=\"224\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Email attachments are one of the certain ways to attract your recipient\u2019s attention. Sending an attachment is easy &#8211; here&#8217;s all you need to know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":42015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[468,470,472],"tags":[15,16,17,31,58],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42808,"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/42808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snov.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}