Throughout your sales process, you'll send clients a variety of documents like brochures, catalogs, proposals, contracts, and invoices. 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 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 Even if we ignore the fact that sending email attachments is outdated, the truth is that it comes with other risks that can harm both your business and client relationships.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 that 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.
You go through the awkward "did you check your spam folder?" conversation. Even if the client doesn't hold it against you, your deal's still been delayed. Or worse, the client went with a competitor whose offer actually got there when it should have.
2. The bad customer experience
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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 your sales process and undermine your overall customer experience strategy.
The mobile dilemma
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, and 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.
The embarrassing follow-up
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.
The compression compromise
"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. 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.
Data breaches
Did you know that PDFs contain metadata that might reveal sensitive information? As much as 63% of people who regularly use PDFs don't know this. Around 20% of cybersecurity incidents related to document breaches involve manipulated metadata. Finding metadata on a PDF is as easy as opening a file in your PDF viewer and inspecting it. You can see the title, author, creation dates, software used, and PDF version.
The more metadata you leave inside your PDF, the easier it is for scammers to manipulate it. They could gain access to your network, identify the server you use to store confidential data, or know which employees to target with phishing attacks, or worse, password spraying.
Password spraying is a cyber attack that relies on a list of common passwords to access multiple accounts on one domain. A scammer only needs to get the usernames from a company and then spray common passwords to break into accounts.
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 encrypted. Even if they're intercepted, the data won't be usable.
Except, there's a catch. 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.
In the US, individual states have consumer data privacy laws in place. 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.
Violating data protection laws is as easy as accidentally sending an email attachment to the wrong person. 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.
How Wonit solves these problems:
With your reputation, finances, and client trust at stake, relying on email attachments is a risk not worth taking. Wonit is more secure and user-friendly alternative.
Secure web-based proposals: Send proposals through secure, web-based links that allow clients to view and sign online. Your documents are completely web-based with mobile-responsive design, so you never have to worry about file sizes, downloads, or clients struggling to read PDFs on their phones.
Version control and instant updates: Make changes instantly with version control. If you spot a pricing error or need to update something, just fix it and the client sees the updated version through the same link. No embarrassing follow-up emails required.
Advanced analytics and real-time notifications: Know exactly when clients view your documents and which sections they spend time on with detailed engagement tracking.
24/7 AI-powered client engagement: Add an AI chatbot that acts like a 24/7 AI-SDR, answering client questions while they review your proposal. No need to be online forever.
Built-in e-signatures: Once they're ready, clients can sign with built-in e-signatures.
Flexible export and embed options: Export to PDF or HTML if needed, or embed proposals directly on your site.
Ready to create seamless client experiences, protect their data, and close deals faster? Get early access to Wonit and stop sending email attachments for good.