Newsletters Sent as a PDF Attachment

Sent to everyone, seen by whom

Once a month, an office manager lays out the newsletter in a word processor, saves it as a PDF and attaches it to an email addressed to a few hundred people in the blind copy line.

A handful of replies come back. Some say thanks, some ask to be removed, and a few are bounce messages nobody reads. Whether anyone opened the attachment, nobody can say.

Associations, clubs and shops have sent newsletters this way for years. The habit made sense when email was read at a desk. It makes less sense now.

How filters treat a large attachment

Mail filters weigh attachments carefully, because PDF files are a favourite disguise for harmful software.

A large attachment sent to hundreds of people at once, from an ordinary office account, resembles the bulk mail filters are built to stop. Some copies land in junk folders, and some are held back without a word.

Many hosting accounts also limit how many recipients an office mailbox may send to in an hour, so a long blind copy list can stall partway.

The attachment on a small screen

Before anything appears on a phone, the attachment has to download. A letter-size page then arrives shrunk to the width of the screen, and the reader has to pinch, zoom and scroll sideways through every column.

Links inside the PDF may not work, and the phone may open it in a viewer the reader has never used.

Readers checking email between jobs or on the bus usually postpone it, and a postponed newsletter is rarely opened later.

The content belongs in the email

The newsletter itself should be the email, written to be read in the message window on any screen:

• Short items with a heading and two or three sentences each.
• One image per item, sized for a phone.
• A link to each full article on the website.
• Dates, prices and offers as text, not inside an image.
• The sender's details and an unsubscribe link at the foot.
• A plain-text version sent alongside.

A reader who glances at the message on a phone sees the important items at once, and taps through only to what interests them.

The full issue on the website

Longer articles belong on the website, one page each, with an archive page that lists every issue. Readers can search them, share a link and find last spring's issue in seconds.

Each article page can also carry the next event's date and a sign-up link, which a PDF sitting in someone's inbox can never update.

A printable version for paper readers

Some readers want paper: older members, a staff room notice board, a counter at the front of the shop. Keep a printable PDF of each issue, linked from its archive page.

For members without email, or who ask, mail printed copies. The PDF stays available to anyone who wants it; it simply stops being the way the newsletter arrives.

A worked example

A safety supply store in an industrial park sells gloves, high-visibility clothing, hard hats, fall protection and signs to contractors, and runs short courses for crews in a room behind the counter.

Each month the office manager laid out a two-page flyer of specials and course dates, saved it as a PDF of several megabytes, and emailed it from her own account to customers in blind copy.

Most of those contractors read email on a phone in a truck. Several mentioned at the counter that they had never seen a flyer, and a course ran with empty seats while its dates sat in unopened attachments.

Requests to be removed reached her inbox as replies, mixed in with orders.

The specials and course dates now go in the body of the email, a line and a photograph each, linking to the product or the course page.

The full flyer is a page on the store's website, with a printable PDF for the counter and job site notice boards.

The email goes out through a mailing service from the store's own domain, with the address and an unsubscribe link at the foot. A contractor glancing at a phone now sees this month's specials without opening anything.

What an attachment never reports

An attachment tells the sender nothing. There is no record of who opened it, which items they read or what they did next.

Unsubscribes arrive as personal replies, and someone has to remember to take each address off the list by hand.

From July 1, the anti-spam law expects every commercial newsletter to name its sender and offer a working unsubscribe, which a list kept by hand makes harder to honour. Take that as a general pointer rather than legal advice.

Sending through a mailing service

A mailing service keeps the list, removes unsubscribes and bounced addresses automatically, and sends in the way receiving servers expect bulk mail to arrive.

It also reports which links were tapped. Opens are only approximate, since some mail programs block or store images, but clicks show which items interested people.

The counter-case

A society whose members value a designed quarterly, read on paper at home, may reasonably keep the PDF as its main edition.

The email should still carry the highlights and a link to the PDF on the website, rather than the file itself. Members keep the edition they like, and the email reaches them.

A club of a dozen members who all asked for the PDF is in a similar position. The aim is to send what readers can open, not to follow a rule for its own sake.

Moving the next issue out of the attachment

1. Choose a mailing service and import the list.
2. Write each item as a heading and a few sentences.
3. Link each item to a full page on the website.
4. Add an archive page for past and current issues.
5. Keep a printable PDF linked from each issue.
6. Send a test to several phones and computers.
7. Read the click report a week after sending.

Step three makes the newsletter measurable. Each link shows what readers wanted more of, which the attachment could never tell you.

Once the newsletter goes out through a mailing service under your own domain, the records that stop your own office's server treating it as forged are covered in the newsletter your own office never receives.

Frequently asked questions

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