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"Snip, Snip, Oops! How to Outsmart Gmail’s Email Clippers

Author

Jason Farris
January 16, 2025

Ever send out an amazing email only to realize your subscribers aren’t seeing the whole thing? Gmail might be the culprit, with its sneaky little clipping feature. And it doesn’t just hide your content—it messes with your tracking too. That means your open rates, click-throughs, and all that important data? It’s incomplete. Frustrating, right?  *blog post

But here’s the good news: Gmail clipping isn’t a mystery, and fixing it is easier than you think. Let’s break down what’s happening, why it’s happening, and—most importantly—how to keep Gmail from chopping up your emails.

What Is Gmail Clipping?

✉️ Do this: Open Gmail and scroll through a few emails. Ever notice a “View Entire Message” link at the bottom? That’s Gmail hiding part of an email that’s too big. Most people don’t even realize they’re missing chunks of your carefully crafted email—let alone bother to expand it. 😬

📉 What’s worse? The invisible tracking pixel that helps measure opens is often buried at the bottom. If your email gets clipped, that pixel is out of sight, out of mind—and out of data. 📊

Why Does Gmail Clip Emails?

It all comes down to size. Gmail cuts off any email that’s larger than 102KB. And let’s be honest, in a world of fancy designs and eye-catching visuals, hitting that limit isn’t hard.

So what’s bloating your emails?

  1. Heavy HTML – A lot of email providers use HTML5, which isn’t exactly lightweight.

  2. Too Many Bells and Whistles – Things like bold text, bright colors, custom fonts, and links all add bulk.

  3. Oversized Images – Those crisp, high-res visuals can quietly pack on the KBs.

How to Stop Gmail Clipping

If you’re thinking, “I’ll just send plain text emails,” sure—that’ll solve the problem. But let’s be real: visuals are crucial, especially if you’re showing off products or grabbing attention. Instead, here’s how you can keep your emails sleek and clip-free:

1. Keep Emails Under 102KB

Before you hit send, check the size of your email. Tools like Litmus or Chrome DevTools make it easy.

2. Optimize Your Images

🖼️Compress images to shrink file size without sacrificing quality.
🌐Use external image hosting instead of embedding base64 images.
📏Stick to a 600px width for balance between quality and size.

3. Minimize HTML Code

Clean up unnecessary tags, comments, and inline styles. Skip redundant tables or spacers that don’t serve a purpose.

4. Streamline Tracking Code

Limit how many tracking pixels and analytics tags you’re using. Most ESPs (email service providers) have built-in tools that get the job done without the extra bloat.

5. Be Smart About Fonts

Stick with web-safe fonts. Custom fonts look cool, but they don’t show up on every device and often bulk up your file size.

6. Simplify Your Content

Less is more. Keep your message focused and your design clean. Too much text or an overload of visuals will push your email over the limit.

7. Avoid Link Overload

Too many links—or overly stylized links (like bold, italic, or colored ones)—can quickly balloon your email size. I’ve seen three links take up 100KB just because we got carried away with formatting.

8. Test, Test, Test

Use tools to preview your email and check for clipping. Better yet, send a real test to yourself on both desktop and mobile to confirm everything looks good.

9. Break It Up

If your email still feels heavy, split the content into two emails or include a "View in Browser" link at the top.

A Hard Lesson Learned‼️

📬 Here’s the deal: Every decision in your email design adds up. We learned this the hard way while working on one of our newsletters. A few extra links, bolding, changing colors—and boom—suddenly the email was over the limit. Lesson learned: keep it simple.

💡 Now that you’re armed with these tips, go forth and create emails that make it into every inbox, unchopped and fully trackable.

🚀 Here’s to better emails and better data!