Knowing how to write an email with an attachment can increase your productivity by improving how you communicate with others. Regardless of the email’s subject, including an attachment correctly can directly impact the way it is received. Emails with attached files are a valuable communication tool, but they require knowledge and etiquette. In this article, we discuss what an email attachment is, explain how to mention and include it in the email and provide tips and examples to use as a guide.

What is an email attachment?

An email attachment is a file that one person sends to another with an accompanying email. Its purpose is usually to enhance the value or benefit that the email offers the reader by providing additional content that you can’t express in the body of the email. The attachment can have different formats and sizes, with the most typical attachments being large text files, various types of documents, spreadsheets, scanned files, forms, pictures and videos.

Should you mention the attachment in the email’s body?

Like with most other forms of communication, you need to follow some rules and guidelines when communicating by email. When it comes to email attachments, it is recommended that you mention the attached file somewhere in the email’s body before sending it, in both formal and informal situations.

Although it is usually easy to recognize an email that has attachments—since it comes with an extra icon next to the subject line that indicates the presence of an attachment—some recipients do not open emails with attachments unless they know exactly what they are and where they come from. Usually, the reason for this is to avoid exposing themselves to a potentially malicious attachment, such as a computer virus, that could affect their device or other files.

How to write an email with an attachment

Consider these five steps when composing and sending an email containing an attachment:

1. Determine what files you wish to send

Before writing the email, you should know exactly what file you are about to send and where it is located on your device’s hard drive or memory drive. Knowing what file or files you are about to send is important because you need to mention them in the email’s text, and knowing their location can help you quickly locate and attach them before sending the email.

2. Write the email’s subject line

The next step is composing the email’s subject line. As many potential recipients tend to disregard emails with attachments unless they know what the attached files are, the email’s subject should reflect the fact that it contains one or more attached files and provide information regarding what they are.

3. Compose the email’s body

If the attachments are the only reason you need to send a message, the email’s body can simply be a brief description of the attached files. If the attached files are only a part of what the email aims to transmit, they need to be mentioned somewhere in the body, ideally with a short sentence that specifies what they are. Sending an email with attachments and no text is not recommended, as the recipient or their email provider may confuse them with spam.

4. Attach the files

After composing the email, the final step before sending it is attaching the necessary file or files. However, this step can take place at any time during the composing and sending process. Many senders prefer to attach the files before writing the email because it eliminates the risk of forgetting to attach them altogether.

5. Review and send the email

Once the email’s subject and body are written and the files are attached, you can do a quick proofread and send the email to the recipient.

In our MailPipe tool, you can do it easily and fast, take a look at this video:

The best of all is that you can send big size attached on your emails!

These steps to write an email are really simple and will help you to use correctly your email sender and to have a wider reach.

A popular use of e-mail is to distribute computer files (i.e., text files, documents, spreadsheets, PDF’s).  This is accomplished by “attaching” a file to an e-mail message and then sending the file with the message, to a recipient.  Almost any type of data file can be attached to an e-mail message for transport.

Unfortunately, this functionality creates an opportunity for distribution of malware. Older e-mail programs often opened files attached to messages automatically, as a convenience to the user. This caused infections without any user intervention.

Newer e-mail programs don’t normally open attachments automatically, so other methods have been employed to entice (convince) the recipient to open attachments manually. This is called “social engineering”, an attack designed to make you take an action (in this case, to click on the attachment). Attackers are constantly coming up with new social engineering tactics to trick users into installing (opening the attachment) malicious programs!!!

Some recent social engineering tactics using e-mail are:

• customized personal message text (“Dear John, …” or “please review the attached invoice for…”)
• spoof (forge) the sender name so it appears to be from someone you know (“[email protected]“)
• make the message threatening (“your account will be closed unless you …”)
• make the message look official from (“[email protected]“)
• make the attachment look harmless (“my_vacation_pictures.php”)

How do we know if an attachment is “executable”?

File names are very important because that is how the computer knows what to do with the file. For example, documents are named with a three-letter extension of “.pdf”, which the computer knows to open using Adobe Reader. Other extensions, such as “.exe or .dmg” tell the computer the file is a program that will run automatically when it’s clicked. There are many file types and program associations on every computer. If your computer doesn’t know what to do with a file (it has no association), the computer will prompt you to select the correct program to open it.

Encrypted/Password Protected Attachments

If a file attachment is encrypted, or if it is password protected, and therefore cannot be examined for malicious code, the entire message included the attachment will be delivered. No warning will be given to the recipient that the file has not ben scanned. (Examples are encrypted .zip files, and password protected office productivity files.)

Options for Sharing Executable Programs: 

• Place the file on a shared drive and send the person its location.
• Place it on a web server and send the person a link to its location.
• Place it on an email sender tool, like MailPipe, that will guarantee you a safe and secure delivery. Try it for free here.

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.

Learn about the comparative advantages between sending those documents of high relevance to your business as attachments and continuing to use traditional mail. Evaluate the conditions offered by each one and make the most convenient choice.

Given the growing need to deliver documentation – often crucial – to your clients, we will analyze the convenience of continuing to use traditional mail or decide to take a step forward and attach these documents to your email shipments. To do this, we compare the factors that your clients attach the most importance to:

Cost: Sending a letter by post at least triples the cost of a message with attachments via email, without considering that this value varies greatly depending on the distance from the destination.

Traceability: Tracking a postal item depends on regular updates by a postal service official. On the contrary, the traceability of a shipment by email is instantaneous and automatic.

Speed: In the best of cases, a traditional shipment is estimated in hours if it is an urban and private mail; Otherwise, it can take days or even more, weeks, considering that in today’s globalized world a company can have customers on five continents. On the contrary, delivery via email occurs in a matter of minutes and to thousands of recipients included in the same shipment.

Deliverability: The deliverability of a letter is relative, since, although it reaches the destination address, it is possible that it will never reach the right person, leading to errors of appreciation in the percentage of delivery of the letters. documents. An email message goes directly to the specific recipient’s mailbox, which ensures that deliverability metrics are accurate as to who it was delivered to.

Digital environment: The growing importance of email to interact with your customers lies mainly in being a way inserted in a digital environment, much appreciated today and used as a two-way communication channel with your business. This translates into a better customer experience for your users regarding your brand, especially when it comes to relatively young consumers.Carbon footprint: Every time we send an email that reaches the inbox of a mailbox, we contribute four grams of CO2 emissions, and if the shipment has attached a document that weighs 1mbps, it is raises to 20 grams.

A traditional paper shipment has an impact on the environment at least two and a half times greater than sending an electronic message of the same characteristics, and can exceed that amount by four times depending on the distance it travels before arriving. to your destination, which greatly increases your company’s carbon emissions and leaves your corporate responsibility on the wrong foot with the society of which you are a part.

What is the best alternative to send documentation via email

Clarified since the best alternative to reach our clients with critical documentation is email, we now have two possible modalities: the first is by inserting links in the body of the message and the second is to attach the files directly to it.

Security: Inserting links to access files has quite low security levels, since hackers use precisely them to redirect to malicious sites, impersonating your company, a strategy known as phishing, whose objective is to steal data important information about your customers, such as credit card numbers and passwords. Another risk of links is what is known as spoofing, which consists of inserting viruses or malware into them so that customers provide valuable personal information without knowing that they are doing it.

21% of permission courier shipments in the world do not reach their destination; are blocked or marked as Spam.-ReturnPath-

Attaching files to a message is recognized today as the safest way to deliver documents to your clients. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that banks in Chile for several years have had in their regulations the express prohibition of including links (links) to download documents in their electronic messaging shipments.

Infrastructure: The download links require a support infrastructure of a certain complexity and often require duplicate and even triplicate repositories at various levels, to ensure document availability, making this practice one of the most expensive in the world. this aspect.

Backup: The backups of each document sent to your clients must also be hosted on this own infrastructure, whose maintenance cost is very high. Such an option is practically unfeasible for companies that send large volumes of documents in compliance with the regulation of some markets, such as banking, insurance companies, health services and the like.