Why is Gmail clipping emails?

Gmail and some other inbox providers can clip emails that are too long, here is how to troubleshoot your templates.

Why do emails get clipped in Gmail?

A clipped email is an email that is not fully displayed in your recipient's inbox. In Gmail, here is how a clipped email looks like.

Users may see "[Message clipped] View entire message" at the bottom of their email, with a link to view the full version. This happens when an email's size exceeds 102KB.

Several factors contribute to email size:

→ Email html code weight

All content adds to the total weight, including:

• Text

• Links

• HTML code (including conditional display code)

Each character uses approximately 1-2KB.

→ Attached images

Images can be attached to your emails in two different ways:

• Enclosed images: Enclosed images are not stored in the template itself. Images are loaded remotely and only the path to the image is referenced in your email template (e.g. <img src="https://path/to/img.png" alt="img"/>). This is Batch's default behavior when you create a template from the email composer.

• Embedded images: You may also embed an image encoded in Base64 within your HTML template (e.g. <img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,[base64code]" />). Use this approach for small images only, as it adds considerable weight to your template: each Base64 digit represents 6 bits of data. For example, a single 156KB JPEG image will add more than 200K characters to your HTML template.

Optimizing Your Emails

Batch automatically includes two tracking pixels in your emails:

• One at the top

• One at the bottom

This dual-pixel approach ensures open tracking even if the email is clipped.

Best Practices

1. Move your unsubscribe link to the top of long emails to reduce spam complaints

2. Minimize email size by:

   • Reducing the number and length of links

   • Condensing text

   • Optimizing HTML code to use fewer characters