After taking the time to design an email and send it out, the last thing news publishers want to see is that a portion of the message is clipped, causing friction and impairing the reader’s experience with the content. Gmail is unique in that it automatically clips emails that have a message size larger than 102 KB, displaying a message partway through an email that reads “[Message Clipped] View entire message.”

In addition to being an inconvenience for readers who have to click to view the entirety of the message in a new tab or browser, there are additional concerns:

Unsubscribe links, typically placed at the end of email, will also be clipped, so contacts looking to unsubscribe may opt for hitting Gmail’s spam button instead.
When the message is clipped, the Gmail mobile app will disable mobile responsiveness and show readers the email in desktop view. Any elements of the newsletter which are meant to be hidden in mobile will become visible, which can impact the design of the email.

Tips to prevent or mitigate email clipping

Use fewer images

Including larger images in emails does not directly increase the size of the email, so shrinking images will not make your overall email size smaller. However, the overall number of images included in an email will increase the amount of code. Consider using less images or combining multiple images into a single file when appropriate.

Shorten the email

Look for areas of the email to tighten up language or condense content. Use “read more” hyperlinks for readers to visit your website to see more of a story or photo gallery. If using a template again and again, review click rates to understand the effectiveness of different areas of the template and identify elements that could be removed or simplified to lessen the overall size of the email.

Optimize links

Don’t link twice if you can link just once. ActiveCampaign appends a tracking code to each individual link, which offers valuable data, but adds length to the email. Include links where necessary and relevant, but be cognizant of how many you’re including in an email that’s getting clipped.

Strategize around the linking of images, text snippets, and buttons to avoid redundant links in lengthier emails.

Use padding to create white space, not line breaks and spacers

Line breaks (pressing enter to create space between blocks of text) and spacer blocks take up more space within an email than padding options offered within the ActiveCampaign designer. Use padding to control desired white space in the email instead.

Keep an eye out for excess code when pasting content

When pasting blocks of copy into an email, there may be leftover HTML code that is attached to the copy, even if the text displaying in the email designer appears unformatted. These extra hidden elements could be contributing to the overall size of the email. To prevent this from happening, paste text into a plain text editor and copy from this editor instead. Examples of a plain text editor include the Notepad app or onlinetexteditor.com. The address bar of a web browser can also work.
Be wary of custom HTML templates or other content pasted into an email, which may have unnecessary styling or code attached.

Test an HTML minifier tool

If there is a suspicion that excess code from elements pasted into the email is to blame for the email size, there are a variety of free HTML minifier tools that can review an email’s HTML code and look for unnecessary or redundant data, such as code comments or formatting. Try using a minifier tool such as Toptal or the GitHub HTML Minifier.

Make a more prominent “View in Browser” option

While avoiding clipping altogether is preferred, a bold, prominent “view in browser” link option at the top of an email can encourage readers to open up the full web version of an email before ever reaching the point where an email is clipped. In ActiveCampaign, the %WEBCOPY% personalization tag can be used as a link in any email to open up the full version of a message in a reader’s browser.

More useful clipping information

Clipping does not clip the open pixel, so all tracking should still be available

Turning off Outlook support can reduce email size

Before sending an email in ActiveCampaign, run an Email Client Preview test from the Campaign Summary page in ActiveCampaign, and send a test version of your message to a Gmail email address, to see if the message is clipped. To check the size of your email before sending, use mail-tester.com.

Is Gmail clipping your emails? Here’s how to mitigate that