Gmail may clip your email. In this case, its content is shortened and hidden behind a "View entire message" link at the bottom of your email:
Discover the reasons that may cause Gmail to clip your emails and how to prevent it.
What are the impacts of a clipped email?
Discover the few impacts of your email being clipped by Gmail:
- Recipients will not be able to view the full content of your email unless they click "View entire message" at the bottom. Call-to-actions, unsubscribe links, and important information can then be missed by your recipients, reducing engagement and click-through rates (CTR).
- Tracking code that monitors email opens can be affected, potentially leading to inaccurate email campaign report data.
- Your deliverability rate can be hurt because recipients who cannot find the unsubscribe link at the bottom of a clipped email are more likely to mark your message as spam.
Reasons for emails being clipped by Gmail
📏 Email size
Gmail automatically clips all emails with a message size larger than 102KB.
An email message includes elements such as text, hyperlinks, and images in its code. Each character of the code weighs approximately 1 to 2 bytes. The total byte size of the characters in the code constitutes the message size. That is why the more content you add, the larger your email size will be.
Here are a few things to keep in mind in terms of file size when sending an email:
Delete any content that may be unnecessary. A message does not need to contain a lot of text or images to get a point across. Before deleting any content, we recommend that you duplicate your email campaign to keep a copy of your campaign with all the original content. If you cannot delete any content, we suggest using hyperlinks to redirect contacts to a page on your website.
As images are loaded into an email from an external source, changing the size of an image does not reduce the size of the email. However, since images add code to your email message, you should delete any unnecessary image from a campaign to remove its associated code, which would then reduce the message size.
When copy-pasting content from a website or software, you may add hidden formatting code to your email's code. Check your source code to make sure you do not paste unnecessary code that may enlarge the file size of your email. To avoid copy-pasting excess code from outside sources, make sure to paste text as plain text in your campaign (CTRL+Shift+V on a PC or Cmd+Shift+V on a MAC).
Minifying your email HTML allows you to reduce the file size of your email by removing unnecessary code, characters, and spacing, and therefore minimize the chances of Gmail clipping your email. To learn more on how to minify the HTML code of your email, check our dedicated section How to prevent your emails from being clipped in Gmail?.
🔤 Subject Line
Gmail sometimes clips and threads messages sent with identical subject lines, such as test emails. When your emails are combined into one thread, the message size can become so large that Gmail clips it. If you do not want your test emails to clip and thread, you can change the subject line before sending your email or delete the test emails you previously sent before sending a new test email.
However, when sending the email to your contacts, the content will only be sent once and should not be clipped by Gmail.
🔣 Formatting issues
Brevo allows you to design your email campaigns by using our simple editor or by directly copy-pasting your HTML code.
When copy-pasting content from external sources, excess code may also be added to your email's code. Excess code can lead to formatting issues, which can then lead to clipping issues by Gmail. To avoid copy-pasting excess code from outside sources, make sure to paste text as plain text in your campaign (CTRL+Shift+V on a PC or Option+Shift+Cmd+V on a MAC).
How to prevent your emails from being clipped in Gmail?
If you have already followed all our recommendations and your emails are still being clipped in Gmail, you may need to minify the HTML code of your email before sending it. Minifying your email HTML allows you to reduce the file size of your email by removing unnecessary code, characters, and spacing, and therefore minimize the chances of Gmail clipping your email.
Step 1: Minify your email HTML code
- Click ··· > View the HTML Code.
- Copy the HTML code of your email displayed in the window.
- Go to https://www.willpeavy.com/tools/minifier/.
- Paste the HTML code of your email on this tool.
- Click Minify.
- Copy the new HTML code provided by the tool.
Step 2: Create a new email campaign
- Create a new email campaign by clicking Campaigns > Email > Create an email campaign.
- At the Design step, click Code your own > Use HTML Editor.
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Paste the new HTML code provided by the tool.
You are now ready to schedule your campaign!
🤔 Have a question?
If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.
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