At some point, you've probably received an email that was clipped by your Email Service Provider (e.g. Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo).
Email clipping happens when an email is so big that the Email Service Provider (or ESP for short) can't show the whole thing at once. The ESP ends up showing only part of the message, offering the user an option to see the entire message outside of the main interface.
Of course, this is a problem for companies that send out newsletters, because every second of attention counts, and you want to make it as convenient as possible for the user to read your messages and take a specific action – usually, clicking on a button. Any barrier between opening the email and taking the desired action will drastically impact conversion rates.
How to avoid email clipping
The main rule of thumb is: keep your email size below 80KB to be on the safe side, and never above 100KB or else it will most likely be clipped by the main ESPs.
NOTE: Keeping email sizes low will also help avoiding Spam folders, as most Spam filters will penalize emails above 100KB.
Email sizes are determined by its source code. Every character in your email's code will take up about 1 or 2 bytes. This means your email's code can have about 50,000 – 100,000 characters before it's clipped. Sounds like a lot, right? However, bear in mind that your email's code is much more than just the text and image links, as it also includes tracking scripts, meta data, and much more.
Here's an example of the source code of an email from our own newsletter. Notice how much information is there before even reaching the main content!
How to check email sizes
Using edrone, that's a piece of cake! Once you're done creating your email in the DESIGN section, click on the DOWNLOAD HTML button below the Drag'n'Drop Editor.
Then, go to the downloaded file and check its size (in Windows, right-click on the HTML file and select "Properties" and see the Size value).
If it's under 80 – 100KB, you're good to go! If not, you will need to reduce it's size.
How to keep email sizes low
The most probably cause of message clipping is simply that there is too much content in that email – text, images, rich media and links can add up to a lot of characters in the source code. So try cutting down some unnecessary elements and your email clipping problems will likely be over!
Another good way to keep email sizes low is avoiding complicated layouts. If you can achieve the same effect using one or two columns instead of four, or even reducing the number of blocks, that can have a positive impact in "slimming down" your email's code.
NOTE: Interestingly, image sizes don't influence the total email size because all images are represented by URLs in the source code regardless of their size. However, image size will influence loading speed, so be sure to keep those as low as possible too!
Either way, if you did everything right but are still worried about clipping emails, it's always a good idea to send a test email and checking for yourself if your email is being clipped.
Keep up the good work!
Need more help?
If you have any further questions about email clipping, please do not hesitate to contact us at hello@edrone.me