How to send an attachment in MailChimp

You need your subscribers to receive a file with your MailChimp campaign. You can’t find where to add an attachment to the email campaign. Read below to find out how to get the file to your contacts.

Can I send a file attachment in MailChimp?

No, you can’t send a file as an attachment, in the traditional sense, in MailChimp. You can however send a link to recipients where they may download the file at their convenience. First off, let’s understand the issue with attachments.

When we include a file attachment in an email message we increase the size of the message. For example, if we add a PDF attachment of 2 MB in size in Outlook or Gmail and send that campaign, we are forcing the recipient to download the attachment whether they want to view the attachment or not. Files sent as attachments force the recipient to use their data to download the file, data to store the file and often slow the network of the recipient. When sending an attachment, the recipient usually has no control over the attachment downloading immediately.

When sending a file as an email attachment to a few people this may not be a major concern however imagine that you send an email marketing campaign to 100,000 subscribers. Suddenly we are forcing the large download onto a significant number of people. If we’re a government department we can expect an open rate of about 27%. That means that about 27,000 of our 100,000 contacts will open our message. We’re therefore inconveniencing 73,000 recipients (by forcing the download) of our campaign that aren’t going to even look at our message at all.

Instructions to add an attachment to a MailChimp campaign

There is a push by email companies to decrease the size of email messages that recipients are committed to download (e.g. Gmail clipping messages more than 102KB). Senders such as MailChimp have a great solution to enable making the ‘attachment’ files easily available to recipients whilst not forcing the download of the file as happens when attaching a file to an email message. Here is how to include your PDF, CSV, DOC. TXT or almost any other file-type as a downloadable file to your MailChimp email campaign:

1. In the Content section of the Campaign Builder, click Edit Design.
2. On the Design step, click an existing text content box or drag and drop a new one into your layout.
3. Create the text you want to link and highlight it.
4. Click the Link icon.
5. Click the Web Address drop-down menu, and choose File.
6. Click Upload to choose a file from your computer.
7. Choose your file, and click Open to upload it to the Content Manager.
8. The URL of your uploaded file will be automatically added to the Insert or Edit Link pop-up modal.
9. Click Insert.

When your recipient receives your campaign, they’ll now be able to click the text you highlighted in the instructions above to download and view your ‘attachment’.