Turning a PDF into an email

[Shelley_Fry]

Hello! Is there a way to upload a PDF into an email template, meaning the full PDF is the body of the email (plus header and footer snippets). Use case is whitelabeled sales sheets from vendors that we would like to send to our clients.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

This is not possible.

PDF is a binary format. It can't simply become the HTML or Text body of an email (nor can it be attached, since Marketo doesn't do attachments).

You'd have to run the PDF through a separate HTML conversion process... which would, no doubt, have errors. They're just very different concepts.

[Abhinav_saini]

Hi Shelley,

You cannot upload PDF for email. However, if you just want to show the PDF along with header and footer you can use image as an entire body instead of PDF(Take screen shot of PDF and add in email body). 

[SanfordWhiteman]

An absolutely perfect, classic way to get blocked as spam — images with tons of embedded text.

Don't do this.

[Abhinav_saini]

Is it? Actually I have tried few times and it worked fine. However, Thanks Sanford I'll keep in mind this going forward. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yes, we've been tuning mail scanners forever to OCR text in images and to assume that attempts to hide tons of text are suspicious. It results in a positive weighting (not outright block on its own) but you don't any of it to apply to your emails.

[Michael_Florin]

Just happened to see this:

https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2020/11/imported-pdf-improvements-google-docs.html

Probably that opens paths to workarounds.