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:
- In the Content section of the Campaign Builder, click Edit Design.
- On the Design step, click an existing text content box or drag and drop a new one into your layout.
- Create the text you want to link and highlight it.
- Click the Link icon.
- Click the Web Address drop-down menu, and choose File.
- Click Upload to choose a file from your computer.
- Choose your file, and click Open to upload it to the Content Manager.
- The URL of your uploaded file will be automatically added to the Insert or Edit Link pop-up modal.
- 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’.
jlistermartin says
October 18, 2018 at 11:29 amThanks, that was very helpful
Chris says
October 18, 2018 at 5:11 pmVery helpful!
Chuck says
October 31, 2018 at 6:16 amI was sending private “subscribers-only” attachments for my magazine, and realized that Google was sniffing the gmail messages and indexing my private issues in Google Search Results. The only way around this problem is to attach the actual PDF for subscribers, but this isn’t possible with MailChimp..
Brian Francis Reeve-Hayes says
November 7, 2018 at 5:33 pmWhen I file these instructions, it only gives me the option to upload a photo! There is no ability to upload a file! Had this procedure changed?
Gary says
November 10, 2018 at 2:28 pmHi Brian, the process hasn’t changed; you should be able to select any of the common filetypes e.g. PDF, TXT etc.
Carol Smith says
December 1, 2018 at 3:58 amWorked perfectly…but when I viewed my test email the pdf file was presented in landscape not portrait so part of the info was cut off. How do I fix this?
Gary says
December 1, 2018 at 3:50 pmHi Carol, I came across a similar issue recently with someone who had saved a PDF from Microsoft Publisher. She saved the file as a PDF using a different means than she first had and all was ok.
Ali says
December 8, 2018 at 1:28 pmCan I change the linked file? We made some modifications and now want the email that’s already been sent to link to the updated file.
Gary says
December 8, 2018 at 4:21 pmNo. Once the campaign has been sent it is not possible to amend the URL nor the file.
Alliance Baptist Church says
January 31, 2019 at 10:03 amMy subscribers can see the file if they open from computer but not on a phone. Is this normal or am I doing something wrong? Thanks
Gary says
February 1, 2019 at 9:19 amTry saving your file with a different program/application.
Jack Ross says
February 14, 2019 at 2:54 amIt was very helpful, Thank you, Jack (A novice at Mailchimp and e-marketing. There was always someone else to do that
Reginaldo Nepomuceno says
March 14, 2019 at 10:00 amHi Gary! Do you think it’s possible to send personalised attachments, like certificates or documents to a list? Have you ever seen a challenge like this?
Gary says
March 17, 2019 at 8:56 amThe way to achieve this is to include the URL for each contacts certificate in your list. Then use the merge tag (for the filed in your list that contains the URLs) as the link.
Marsha Kamish says
April 17, 2019 at 11:00 amI use pages and convert to pdf. Could this be why I can’t upload the pdf? I converted to Word and then to pdf but it was all out of alignment. Any suggestions?
Gary says
April 17, 2019 at 11:33 amHi Marsha, a tool such as https://cloudconvert.com/pages-to-pdf may work
Gary says
April 17, 2019 at 11:43 amMarsha, I looked more into this and it seems that there are a number of issues with Pages and PDF (e.g. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8594352 : “It is not out of the realm of possibilities that Apple has yet again, modified the PDFKit and Print Operation frameworks for Mojave, and may have introduced collateral PDF imaging issues”). Perhaps try using Google Docs as the export as PDF from Google Docs works really well.
Marsha Kamish says
April 17, 2019 at 11:36 amThat would have been cool but I would have to pay for it. I’m too cheap for that when it should work as it is. Thanks, though!
Gary says
April 17, 2019 at 11:39 amCloudconvert is free https://cloudconvert.com/pricing
Marsha Kamish says
April 17, 2019 at 11:53 amI must have misunderstood the message I was getting. I decided to just link to a url and it’s working great. Thanks for your help!
Marsha Kamish says
April 17, 2019 at 11:54 amAnother good idea! Thanks. Trust Apple to fix what ain’t broke!