diff --git a/djrill/mail/backends/djrill.py b/djrill/mail/backends/djrill.py
index 18ee6a8..6ddc7ce 100644
--- a/djrill/mail/backends/djrill.py
+++ b/djrill/mail/backends/djrill.py
@@ -294,15 +294,18 @@ class DjrillBackend(BaseEmailBackend):
         if mimetype is None:
             mimetype = DEFAULT_ATTACHMENT_MIME_TYPE
 
+        # b64encode requires bytes, so let's convert our content.
         try:
-            content_b64 = b64encode(content)
-        except TypeError:
-            # Python 3 b64encode requires bytes. Convert str attachment:
+            if isinstance(content, unicode):
+                # Python 2.X unicode string
+                content = content.encode(str_encoding)
+        except NameError:
+            # Python 3 doesn't differentiate between strings and unicode
+            # Convert python3 unicode str to bytes attachment:
             if isinstance(content, str):
-                content_bytes = content.encode(str_encoding)
-                content_b64 = b64encode(content_bytes)
-            else:
-                raise
+                content = content.encode(str_encoding)
+
+        content_b64 = b64encode(content)
 
         mandrill_attachment = {
             'type': mimetype,
diff --git a/djrill/tests/test_mandrill_send.py b/djrill/tests/test_mandrill_send.py
index 583d5b1..403584a 100644
--- a/djrill/tests/test_mandrill_send.py
+++ b/djrill/tests/test_mandrill_send.py
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
+
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
+
 from base64 import b64decode
 from datetime import date, datetime, timedelta, tzinfo
 from email.mime.base import MIMEBase
@@ -177,6 +181,23 @@ class DjrillBackendTests(DjrillBackendMockAPITestCase):
         # Make sure the image attachment is not treated as embedded:
         self.assertFalse('images' in data['message'])
 
+    def test_unicode_attachment_correctly_decoded(self):
+        msg = mail.EmailMessage(
+            subject='Subject',
+            body='Body goes here',
+            from_email='from@example.com',
+            to=['to1@example.com'],
+        )
+        # Slight modification from the Django unicode docs:
+        # http://django.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ref/unicode.html#email
+        msg.attach("Une pièce jointe.html", '<p>\u2019</p>', mimetype='text/html')
+
+        msg.send()
+        data = self.get_api_call_data()
+
+        attachments = data['message']['attachments']
+        self.assertEqual(len(attachments), 1)
+
     def test_embedded_images(self):
         image_data = self.sample_image_content()  # Read from a png file
         image_cid = make_msgid("img")  # Content ID per RFC 2045 section 7 (with <...>)