How to prevent Gmail from clipping your emails

How to prevent Gmail from clipping your emails

In short: Gmail clips an email when its HTML code is larger than about 102 KB, hiding the rest, including your footer, unsubscribe link, and tracking pixel, behind a "View entire message" link. Keep the code small by cutting content, pasting as plain text, not sending repeated test emails with the same subject line, and testing in Gmail before you send.
Ever wondered why your email campaign's message is not fully displayed when it lands in your contact's inbox and why the "View entire message" link is displayed in the email? It's because Gmail has come up with the practice of clipping emails.

Preventing Gmail clipping – An infographic.

Why Gmail clips your emails

Every email consists of text, image, HTML that is used to style your content, URLs, tracking code, and more. All these are put together in code to form your email message. To determine your email's size, Gmail will measure every character of the code. Only the code counts: the code and URLs that display an image add to the size, but the image file itself does not. If the size exceeds 102 KB, the email will be clipped, and the recipient will instead see the "View entire message" link.

You will face the following issues when your email gets clipped:
  • The tracking code that calculates the open rate is also cut off when it sits in the part that gets clipped, so marketers won't be able to measure the performance of their campaign. See how open tracking works.
  • The unsubscribe link will not be displayed when it sits in the footer, and you have to click "View entire message" to see it along with the message. This means your clipped email may not meet the CAN-SPAM requirement for a clear and conspicuous way to opt out, recipients who can't find the link may mark your email as spam instead, and your emails might face deliverability issues. See unsubscribes.

When your email will get clipped

Your emails will be clipped during the following scenarios:

Your email has a lot of content

If your email campaign has more content than necessary, your email's code size will increase. If the size is more than 102 KB, your email will be clipped. Marketers often end up in this situation when they try to address too many topics in a single email.

You copy and paste content from a different source or a website

When you copy some content from a website or a word processing program and paste it into your campaign, the hidden formatting code of the content will also be added to your campaign. This will increase the code size of your campaign, and, if it exceeds 102 KB, your email will be clipped.

You send multiple test emails with the same subject line

Gmail will combine emails with the same subject line into a single thread. When you send multiple test emails with the same subject line, Gmail will combine your emails into one single email and the email message will become too big. This will force Gmail to clip your email.

How to avoid Gmail clipping

We know that it takes a lot of effort to design a captivating email. You can follow these techniques to prevent your emails from being clipped:
  • When crafting your campaign, provide crisp and relevant information. If you want to provide additional information, you can direct the recipient to your website or relevant websites by using hyperlinks.
  • Choose a minimalistic email design and try to avoid heavy graphic content. You can add simple images that support your message. This approach will help you reduce the code size of your email. Keep in mind that the size of the image file itself doesn't count, but the code that displays it does.
  • Don't copy and paste content from other websites and word processing programs directly. You must paste as plain text to remove the formatting style used in the source website or word processing program. This will prevent unwanted code from getting added to your email.
  • Don't send multiple test emails with the same subject line.
  • Before sending your email campaign to your contacts, test it by sending it to your Gmail account to identify rendering issues. See seven tips to foolproof your campaign.
  • When you design your email campaign, focus on offering content that is necessary and relevant to the recipient. Don't try to address multiple topics in a single email and don't burden the recipients with too much content. This not only prevents your emails from being clipped, it also keeps recipients engaged.
  • Aim to stay comfortably under the limit, not right at it. Remove code you don't need, such as HTML comments, and keep the number of links reasonable, because every URL adds to the size.
  • Make sure recipients can unsubscribe even if the email is clipped. Gmail and Yahoo require one-click unsubscribe, as defined in RFC 8058, from senders of 5,000 or more emails a day. As a fail-safe, you can also add an unsubscribe link near the top of your email.