Availability of this feature in Pro/Basic/Free versions of Autoresponder:
Most webmasters use autoresponders to send follow up messages and newsletters from their web site to their subscribers. It comes to a point where they need to send attachments with their auoresponder messages. Webmasters like to send free reports or downloads as an attachments to the emails. Webmasters are thinking twice to send attachments in emails as they might end up in the junk folders of free email accounts like hotmail and yahoo.
Hosts and email account providers are enabling spamassassins, spam filters, redirection emails, email validating services etc to get rid of sp*am. Especially these filters tend to push email with attachments into junk folders.
So how to deal with this? What are the things you need to remember while sending attachments?
1. Size of the attachments.
Big attachments of some megabytes size are particularly targets for deletion or reason for ending up in junk folder. If you want to send big attachments, make sure you zip them to minimize the size. Or divide the file into 2 or 3 parts , zip them and send them.
2. Type of the attachments.
File types like exe, doc, rtf etc are considered as most suspicious and subscribers don't like to receive them. So let them know that they will receive such files as zip attachments or avoid those file types completely. Try using file types like pdf and zip where people are comfortable to receive them.
3. Attachment links.
If you want, you can send attachments as downloadable links. This is a very easy alternative to sending direct attachments in emails. Send the report or ebook or whitepaper as a link in the email. The reader clicks on the link to your web site and download it there.
4. Optimize your server.
Though not possible all the time on shared hosting, but if possible try to optimize your server with SPF record, Domainkeys, rDNS and email headers.
Sometimes firewalls and antivirus software installed on your server throw internal server errors or stop email with attachments to go out of the server. Same can happen with email receiving servers.
5. Get listed as safe.
Ask your subscriber to add your email address to their safelist. This way you can make sure that your email wll be delivered properly to your subscriber inboxes. Try to deliver some good value in your emails, so your subscribers like to receive them and try to add your email to their safe list.
Finally you can send autoresponder attachments with your email messages only when your software allows you to do it. You need to upload files to your server and attach them to your autoresponder messages. Always try sending the messages to yourself and see whether they are delivered properly.
If you have added attachment links directly in your email messages, clearly state the name of the file, type of the file and how to download and save them to their computers. This way your subscribers don't feel leftout by seeing the attachments and when they don't know what to do with them.
