Attachment and Download Link: Send Each Document Both Ways

When you email each person their own document, not every recipient wants it the same way. Some like the file right in their inbox, so they can save it to a folder without thinking. Others read their email on a phone, or work somewhere that is strict about attachments, and are better off with a link. Until now you had to pick one. As soon as you put a download link into the email, the attached file quietly dropped out, and nothing on the screen told you so.

Now you can see exactly how your document reaches each person, and a single button keeps the file attached next to the link. Your recipients use whichever suits them.

Two kinds of link

While you write the email for your mail merge, click Insert below the text and choose one of two entries at the bottom of the menu. You can also type @ in the text and pick Insert download link or Insert portal link.

• Download link starts the download of the file with one click.
• Portal link opens a page with your sender details and a download button, a friendlier landing spot than a bare file.

Every recipient gets their own link to their own document. If you have used these before: they were called “Direct Download” and “Download Portal” and now have shorter names, each with a one-line description in the menu.

See what each person gets

Below the email text, in the row where your attachments sit, your document now shows up as the first chip. It names the file each person receives. If you gave your files a custom name under Filename, you see that name with its fields, for example Invoice_[First Name].pdf, where each person’s own name fills in. Without a custom name, the chip shows the template’s name.

Next to the file name, the chip says what will happen:

• personalized for each recipient: there is no link in the email, so every person gets their own file attached, just as before.
• download link only, portal link only or links only: the link in the email takes the place of the attachment. The first time you see this, a short note under the row says so: “The link in your email replaces the attachment.”
• attached + download link or attached + portal link: each person gets the file and the link.

Keep the file with Also attach

When the chip reads “download link only”, click Also attach right next to it. The file goes back into the email and the link stays in the text. Changed your mind? The small x on the chip (Send the link only, without the attachment) takes you back to the link alone.

Your choice is saved with the template’s email, so it is still in place the next time you send. If you never click the button, nothing changes from how things worked before: a link in the email replaces the attachment.

Where it helps

• Invoices. Customers who file invoices straight from the attachment keep doing exactly that, and anyone who would rather click than open an attachment uses the link.
• Certificates. Course participants save the PDF to their own files, while the portal link gives them a neat page to open on their phone.
• Contracts and large files. For a big file, a link on its own keeps the email light. For a contract the other side must keep, attach it as well, so the paper trail sits in their inbox.
• Emails that get forwarded. When a recipient passes your email on to a colleague or the accounts team, the attached file travels with it.

Good to know

• An email-only campaign has no document to send, so it shows no document chip.
• In the desktop app, download and portal links are not available, so the document is always attached there.

Try it

Open your next mail merge, add a Download link or Portal link to the email and check the chip in the attachment row. One click on Also attach and every recipient gets both. New to writing emails in MailMergic? The post on the new email editor walks you through it.