I, along with many of you, receive countless e-mails from agents containing attachments. These attachments can be in an image format such as Bitmap (.bmp), JPEG (.jpg), GIF (.gif), TIFF (.tif); or, in a document format such as Word 97-2003 (.doc), Word 2007 (.docx), Publisher (.pub), Excel 97-2003 (.xls), or Excel 2007 (.xlsx). Your Word or Excel documents could also contain Macros which would result in the 2007 versions of Office adding an “m” to the file-extension (i.e. .docm and .xlsm, respectively). The older versions of Office did not differentiate between Macro-enabled and standard documents with an alternate extension.
For those interested, Macros are small programs written inside Office documents that perform certain functions on the document. They are predominantly found in large corporate documents, but can occasionally be included in smaller documents, as well. I have written a few, in the past, for some of my clients. However, while they are useful in controlled and trusted environments, they should never be used for public, shared documents as they are another means of transmitting viruses.
As I teach in my e-mail marketing class, while it may be convenient to simply attach and forward, you should never send any of the above attachments if you should hope that your marketing efforts are to be successful. Reasons are listed below.
Images:
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While the above image formats are standard, they are not optimized for email attachments. Meaning,
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Most modern digital cameras (even on your phone) are at least 6 MegaPixel, if not 10 MegaPixel. A high quality image at 10 MegaPixel would be approximately 3072x2304 pixels, requiring 50 MB of disk space. Standard image quality would result in a 1024x768 image (15 MB) or 800x600 (4MB). As you can see, size alone, would discredit the ability to attach these images.
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Two options would be to reduce the quality or reduce the image size. For reducing quality, you would have to reduce quality of an 800x600 to at least 60% and would be very grainy – imagine a larger picture and its quality reduction. For image size, you could reduce the image to 640x480 (which FMLS and GAMLS do automatically when you upload a picture). Although, most computer screen resolutions have a minimum of 1024x768 today. The image may seem to appear okay on a screen with that resolution. However, one of my computers has a resolution of 1440x900, while the other has 1280x800. A 640x480 image would be too small to see detail.
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Do not send images in Bitmap (.bmp) format as they are only 256 colors, unlike normal images that are 16 million colors.
Documents:
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Many people still do not own a version of Office. Many people use the word processor that is shipped with their computer (generally, Microsoft Works). Microsoft Works does not read Word documents (Microsoft designed it this way in hopes of "encouraging" the user to upgrade).
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Even less users own a copy of Microsoft Publisher. Additionally, Publisher documents are generally over 4 MB after you include pictures, word art, and symbols. If you’re sending a Publisher document, 80-90% of your audience isn’t reading.
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I, like many of others, hate the new Microsoft Office Ribbon Bar (i.e. the new File Menu) and, furthermore, I (again, with many others) will not upgrade until I absolutely have too. While I, personally, have installed a translation tool enabling me to read Office 2007 documents, many others have not. Therefore, again, if you’re sending Office 2007 documents, most people aren’t able to read them.
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Finally, remember what I wrote above concerning Macros? While you may not realize it, some of you have, over time, installed some program, plug-in, or feature on your computer that requires the Macro option to be enabled. Therefore, regardless of whether you are personally writing any Macros (and, probably none of you are), Macros are being saved inside your documents. When someone opens a document with a Macro embedded, Office will alert that user that one has, in fact, been embedded and if the user trusts the document. If this is the case, you should NEVER open the document even if you trust the sender.
The Answer:
Convert your documents to PDF’s. PDF is a universal document format (that means everyone can read them). You can send high quality images at a mere fraction of the file size while maintaining the image quality. There are no embedded applications (Macros) in the documents.
The best news is, YOU DON’T HAVE TO PURCHASE Adobe Acrobat Professional to write PDF’s. Even better, you can write your own PDF’s for FREE.
Download a copy of PrimoPDF and install it. PrimoPDF installs a virtual printer onto your computer. When you want to create a PDF, simply print the document/image to your PrimoPDF printer and a PDF document is saved on your hard drive. Then, attach the PDF to an email and send it.
The paid version of PrimoPDF allows you to create editable PDF forms, but the free version is more than sufficient for creating PDF documents. I’ve installed it for many of my clients and all of them have given me great feedback.
The link is: http://www.primopdf.com/
Take a look and see for yourself.