Risky Business: 6 Reasons Why You Should Never Send Another Email Attachment

Throughout your sales process, you'll send clients a variety of documents. Brochures, catalogs, proposals, contracts, invoices - and that's just to name a few. Each document you send involves sharing important information that gets you one step closer to sealing the deal.

From the moment a client expresses interest, you know the clock is ticking. Get it over to them as fast as possible, otherwise they might turn to a competitor.

For most businesses, this urgency means reaching for a familiar, seemingly the easiest way to send important documents - email. You create the document, convert it to PDF, attach, send, and you're good to go.

Except, you're not. Even if we ignore the fact that sending email attachments is outdated, the truth is that it comes with other risks that can harm both your business and client relationships.

1. Welcome to the spam folder

One of the main reasons emails get flagged as spam? Attachments. Since scammers love using attachments as a way of hiding malware, it comes as no surprise email spam filters see them as suspicious.

As a result, your documents end up unseen and unopened. Sure, you'll eventually send a follow-up email, but it's a lose-lose situation.

Best case scenario, you go through the awkward did-you-check-your-spam-folder conversation. Even if the client didn't hold it against you, your deal's still been delayed. Worst case, the client went with a competitor whose offer actually got there when it should have.

2. The bad customer experience

As much as 88% of customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services. They expect professional, seamless interactions at all points of contact with your business.

Email attachments are a lot of things, but seamless is not one of them. They create unnecessary friction in a sales process, not to mention the poor customer experience that follows.

Let's say you've sent your client a PDF contract to sign. First, they have to download it to read through it. Since 55% of people open emails on their phones, you've now put your client in a terrible position: either suffer through trying to read a PDF on their phone or fire up the computer.

Sure, looking through a PDF on a computer screen is better than having to zoom your way in and out through it on a phone. However, research spanning 20 years has shown that, even on a computer, PDFs are inaccessible, unpleasant to read, and difficult to navigate. As a matter of fact, when given a choice, a vast majority of people prefer not to have to deal with PDFs at all.

3. Forever out there

When you send an email, you're relinquishing control (not in a good way). You no longer have a say in what happens to the email itself or anything attached to it. Once sent, you can never unsend it.

The email and its contents can be forwarded, copied, and downloaded, potentially forever, and you have no way of knowing about it. When dealing with sensitive documents like contracts and proposals, this can lead to confidential information falling into the wrong hands.

On top of that, any mistake you might have made, whether it's a simple typo, an outdated document version, or incorrect pricing, can't be fixed without the client noticing. Just imagine how embarrassing it would be to follow up your proposal email with:

"Hey, sorry, we got our own pricing wrong, so please ignore it and take a look at this revised version."

Besides being unprofessional, it would also make the client doubt your expertise. If you can't get your own pricing right and don't catch the mistake before sending them a proposal, why would they trust you're competent enough to get their project right?

Even if this doesn't jeopardize the deal, chances are the client won't feel completely at ease about doing business with you. As a result, you might be in for more negotiations, back-and-forth emails, and delayed projects.

4. File size exceeds attachment limit

The fact that email servers come with file size limits is widely known. If your attachment exceeds the limit, it won't get delivered. As a matter of fact, as much as 58% of users often have issues sending PDFs due to these file size limitations.

"But I know my server's file size limit, so I'm good," you might be thinking to yourself. That may well be true, but what about your client's server? They might have a much smaller limit, so your attachment never gets to its intended destination.

"But can't I just compress the PDF before I send it?" Sure you can - but not without sacrificing quality. There is no such thing as lossless compression - you have to choose between a visually perfect document or a smaller file size.

Compression often distorts images, blurs text, and affects the overall readability of the document. When you send your client a pixelated proposal they have to squint through, you're showing them that cutting corners on quality is your idea of acceptable.

5. Download required

Email attachments are just plain inconvenient. For one, they add up quickly and crowd email storage space. Then, if your client wants to read the attached document, they have to download it. Now, you're not only filling up their email storage, but their computer storage as well.

For clients opening emails on mobile devices, it's even worse since phones tend to have more limited storage options. If the client's storage is already full when receiving your email, they now have to find something to delete before they can see what it is you're selling.

Add a slow or unreliable internet connection that interrupts the download process or practically grinds it to a halt into the mix, and this entire ordeal becomes a nightmare. By the time the client sets eyes on your proposal, they're more annoyed than excited.

Even if you handled everything perfectly up to this point, your client is now disappointed with their buying experience. While this doesn't mean you can't bounce back, it's more unnecessary friction added to your sales process.

6. Security risks taken: all of them

Everyone knows that email is a common target for cyberattacks. While you won't send your clients malicious email attachments, your sensitive documents can still be intercepted.

Once a client's information gets compromised, it's hard to earn their trust back. Even if it's not directly your fault, clients will associate the security breach with your business. In addition to your reputation, this also damages your relationship with the client.

By sending important documents as email attachments, you're putting your credibility on the line. Worst thing is, you might not even be aware of the security risks you're taking.

Data breaches

Did you know that PDFs contain metadata that might reveal sensitive information? If the answer is no, you're not alone. As much as 63% of people who regularly use PDFs don't know.

Still, around 20% of cybersecurity incidents related to document breaches involve manipulated metadata. If you think this is hard-to-access data that requires hacker levels of access, sorry to disappoint you.

Finding metadata on a PDF is as easy as opening a file in your PDF viewer and inspecting it. Depending on the levels of care the original creator took, you can see:

• The title
• The author
• Creation and modification dates
• Software used to create it
• PDF version

And that's just to name a few. The more metadata you leave inside your PDF, the easier it is for scammers to manipulate it. Soon, they could gain access to your network, know which employees to target with phishing attacks, or identify the server you use to store confidential data.

Encryption issues

If you think emails get automatically encrypted by your email service provider, you're right and wrong at the same time. For example, Gmail uses the TLS encryption protocol.

In theory, this makes all your emails, including attachments, encrypted. Even if they're intercepted, the data in them won't be usable.

Except, there's a catch. In order for your encryption protocol to work, your recipient's server also has to support the same encryption protocol. If it doesn't, your emails and attachments remain unprotected.

Compliance issues

Depending on your industry and where you do business, data protection is more than just a best practice - it's a legal requirement. In Europe, failing to adhere to GDPR regulations could cost you up to $20 million or 4% of your worldwide annual revenue if that number is higher.

And while there's no universal data protection regulation across the US, individual states have put consumer data privacy laws in place. In addition to that, HIPAA governs how health information has to be handled, transmitted, and stored. The penalties include fines, corrective action, or jail time, depending on the severity of the violation.

All that said, violating data protection laws is as easy as accidentally sending off an email attachment to the wrong person. I would know - I once got someone else's phone plan proposal sent to me on accident. Their name, home address, email, and other personal data were all right there. It was a simple mistake, but it instantly made me happy that they weren't my current provider.

What's the solution?

With your reputation, finances, and client trust at stake, relying on email attachments is a risk not worth taking. Modern tools like Better Proposals are a more secure and user-friendly alternative.

With Better Proposals, you're sending documents through secure, unique links that allow clients to view and sign online. Your and your client's data is encrypted both in transit and at rest and you have full control over who can access your documents.

Our eSignatures are compliant with EU and US regulations, and everything you send comes with detailed tracking. Your documents are completely web-based so you never have to worry about file sizes, image quality, or downloads.

You can negotiate terms in real time by letting clients contact you through live chat while reading your documents and make changes instantly. Once they're happy, they can sign and pay you from the same platform and you can start your onboarding process.

It's a way for you to create truly seamless client experiences, protect their data, and safeguard your reputation in one go. Why would you want to send another email attachment ever again?