Bronto Blog

Attachments are a frequent support inquiry and a worthy blog topic. While you can’t send attachments with Bronto messages as you would with Microsoft Outlook, you can create a virtual “attachment” by hyper-linking to a document in the body of your message.

First things first, here are a few reasons Bronto doesn’t allow attachments:

1. Attachments increase the size of your message. The larger the file size, the more susceptible your message becomes to a filter or an outright block. Also, ESPs (especially free ones like Hotmail, Yahoo etc) limit the size of emails it will accept and deliver to an inbox. A message with an attachment might not be delivered because it puts the recipient over their mailbox quota.
2. Attachments can’t be opened by all users. Not all people run the same operating system and/or use the same applications. Although they have the file, they might not be able to actually open it.
3. Attachments sometimes can raise red flags. Smart email users will sometimes choose not to open attachments from an unfamiliar source because of a potential virus and damage to their computer.
4. As we’ve already alluded, viruses spread through attachments. By choosing to not support attachments at all, we’re able to completely remove the virus risk for our customers.

Instead of an attachment in the typical sense, we recommend that you
“host” your “attachment” and link to it in the body of your message. Here’s why:

1. Linking to the document mitigates all of the potential delivery problems you might encounter with attachments.
2. Linking to the document enables you view the contacts that “open” the “attachment” via Bronto’s click-through tracking. Links to a .pdf or .doc work just like a link to a URL and thus will appear in your link tracking and click-through overlay reports.

Here’s how to do it. First, host image files, Word documents and PDFs on your SITE tab:

1. Go to the “hosting” sub tab under the “SITE” tab in your Bronto account.
2. Click the “browse” button to locate the file on your hard drive and then click OK.
3. Once the file is listed in the text box, click the “upload” button.
4. Once the upload is complete, you will see the file name in the list.

Now that your file is hosted, you can direct your contacts to view it through a hyperlink in a message (Please note this is only possible through rich text and not plain text):

1. Highlight the text you want to hyperlink (i.e. Please click HERE to view…).
2. On the rich text toolbar click the “Insert/Edit link” button (globe with chain link).
3. In the pop-up box, click the “browse server” button. A second new box will pop up that shows the contents of your “SITE” tab. Find the correct file and click on it.
4. That second pop up will close and you will see the URL text box populated with the link to your file. Click “OK”.

Now you have a link in your message that points users to the file that you’ve hosted online.

In conclusion, attachments can cause delivery problems and unnecessarily increase the size of your message. This is precisely why Bronto gives you 10MB of free hosting space with your account (additional space can be purchased). Remember, as with all messages, be sure to test and verify that all of your links work the way you want them to.