A lot of people have been asking us lately how to attach files to their MailChimp campaigns (like a PDF, Word Doc, etc).

Thing is, we really can’t let people attach ginormous 2-meg files and then send out to 50,000 people on their list. It’s not an optimal experience for the recipient (let alone the ISPs out there) and the bandwidth costs would be ridiculous.

We used to tell people to take their file and upload it to their own web server, then come back to MailChimp and link to that file.

But now we have a way to do all that from inside MailChimp…

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say I’m working on an email and I want to place a link to a white paper.

First, just highlight the text:

BTW: I personally think it’s good netiquette to indicate the size and type of the file they’re about to download. How many times have you been caught off guard by a 50-meg PDF download?

after highlighting the text, click the “insert link” button in MailChimp:

then select the “upload” tab:

and upload the file from your computer.

We’ll host the file for you totally free (each file must be less than 10 megs) on our CDN servers, and track how many times it was clicked.

And if you’ve got your AIM reports installed, we’ll even show you WHO clicked the link (try that with an old-fashioned attachment).

By the way, all your uploaded attachments are accessible if you click the “insert link” button, and then the “browse media” button:

you’ll see your uploaded files here: