Quit sending attachments in your cold email

Just don’t do it. It is as easy as that. 

There is no need to send attachments in your cold email. if anything, you are doing yourself a lot of harm by doing this. Attachments trip spam filters, especially as a cold email. They also make the email much larger, which can also lead to your message ending up in spam.

The deliverability issues, combined with the fact that people do not download attachments from cold emails means that you should stop doing it. 

Now that you know that you shouldn’t be attaching attachments to your cold emails, I dive in a bit to why and what you should be doing instead. 

It is all about getting to the inbox

While we like to say that our top priority with any cold email campaign is to get positive replies, in reality the first battle is to actually make it to the inbox. 

We need to do everything in our power to actually make it there, and as a result attaching anything in your cold emails can quite easily trip spam filters, and before you even start you have lost the battle because your email never gets seen. 

The reason for this dates back to the early internet days when spammers would send people attachments. Remember, actual spam contains harmful attachments looking to do harm. So to be on the safe side, it is easier from a security standpoint to block any email address that is not in the address book that is sending mail with an attachment. 

Even if your target has lax spam filters, attachments make the email larger, once again potentially alerting security protocols. 

This is not always the case, but why put your domain in danger just to send some attachments.

Ask yourself this question: when was the last time you downloaded an attachment from a cold email. Yeah, it’s been a while hasn’t it? Then why think your target would do the same thing?

Don’t be lazy

One of the reasons we tend to want to send attachments to our cold emails is because we are lazy. 

The thought is, if we just send the information, the target will have it, then they can give it a read. Plus they won’t ask us for more information. We are cutting off the back and forth. 

But in reality, it doesn’t work that way. 

Instead, our attachments are getting read and our laziness could be turning off potential clients. 

It is easier to throw a bunch of information at the lead and just see what sticks. But this is just being lazy. 

Even if your target did read everything, you have overwhelmed him with information. So much so they may not know what the actual Call To Action is. 

When we are cold emailing, we have to be concise. The sad truth of this is that salespeople as a whole are quite bad at keeping things concise. Especially in written form. 

Part of it is the desire to overcome objections by bombarding the lead with information. The other part is that it is a skill to be succinct. It is harder to write a short cold email than a long one.

As an example, I see many people attaching a case study to their cold emails. I completely understand why they are doing this. But it is hurting deliverability and not getting read.  

Instead, the right thing to do is to write an incredibly short case study in about 2 sentences that consist of no more than 3 lines on an email. Boil 1000 words into 43. An example:

This is similar to how we helped Cartwheel Insurance with their client dashboards. They are now getting live feeds of all of their data with a single platform instead of spending 3 hours a day pulling the data in from 7 different technologies.  

Attachments also cause confusion. With every cold email you want a singular CTA. Asking for an appointment and wanting them to read the attached case study is now adding more friction to the situation. 

Remember, when you confuse, you lose. Don’t add an attachment, it adds too much to the equation. 

Focus on them

Quit using I, me, we so often in your emails. 

I am sure your business is pretty great, but a cold email lead really doesn’t care. 

They only care about what you can do to help them solve their problem. 

If they don’t have a problem you can solve, you don’t need to be sending them a message. 

Spend more time explaining that you both understand their issues and that you can help them solve those issues. 

Let your target process the information that you can help them (you still must be compelling) and then it is okay if you leave it to them to ask for more information. 

Plus if you are doing it right, you will have multiple emails coming their way, so you can literally drip feed them information until they are ready to pull the trigger. 

What to do instead

Yeah, so let’s say that is all good, but you have the world’s greatest case study and you just know for certain that it will add value and you just can’t squeeze it down to a few sentences. 

There are several options other than attaching a PDF to the email. 

1. Option number one upload it to your server and paste that link into your email. With most drip campaign stacks these days you should be able to tell if your lead has clicked on the link or not. So there is the benefit to be able to track who is clicking. Also, with it being uploaded to your server, the domain will be branded to you, which is another plus. 
2. The second option is for those of you who can’t get on your company’s server to upload the doc, PDF, image, etc. Just upload it to Google Drive or Dropbox and get the link from there and share it once again in the body of your email. In Drive, you find the document you want to share, right click on get link and make sure to change the security settings. From there you can send people to your uploaded link. 

Note that for both of these options, make sure to check that the link works before you send it to a lead. 

1. If you are feeling like being a bit more creative and you have access to your company’s website, make a landing page with the information and include all the details that you want while making it. You can be creative and add testimonials and even be quite visual about it. Obviously the issue here is that you have to have access to the website. But making the right case to the higher ups should be an easy sell. 
2. This is a bit of a novel idea, but just ask the target if they would like more information. In actuality this is a lower touch and lower friction ask them in an initial email than asking for a call or meeting. 

Just don’t

I think there are plenty of reasons here laying out why not to attach anything in cold emails. I am sure there are more reasons, but you get the point. 

There is not a reason to do it and there are some alternatives. Good luck and make sure you are doing everything you can to make sure you are hitting the inbox. 

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We have a lot more advice over at Pretty Good Cold Emails if you are interested in learning more or if you need help with your next cold email campaign.