Ways to manage email weight and avoid Gmail clipping

Gmail enforces a strict 102 KB size limit on email content, regardless of the platform used to send your emails. If your email exceeds this limit, Gmail may ‘clip’ the content, replacing part of your message with an ellipsis and a 'View entire message' link, which subscribers must click to see the rest of your newsletter.

Email weight plays a key role in whether Gmail or other providers will clip your message. In beehiiv, if your email size approaches this threshold, a warning will appear at the top of the post editor. 

Clicking the Warning will reveal your email’s current weight.

Fortunately, managing email weight and avoiding clipping is fairly simple. In this article, we’ll explain what email weight is, the potential impact of clipped emails on your newsletter, and best practices for keeping your content within limits to avoid clipping. 

---

Email weight explained

Code weight is the file size of the HTML code that makes up your email. Each character of HTML is approximately 1-2 bytes. Gmail imposes a strict limit, clipping emails once the code weight exceeds 102 KB. It’s a best practice to stay under 100 KB to ensure you’re not over the threshold – and please pay attention to this number being KB, not MB. beehiiv will provide a warning if your email approaches this threshold.

---

Impact of email clipping

• beehiiv places open rate pixels at the top of the email, meaning that clipping will not impact your open rate. However, the open rate won’t give you a full picture of how many people read your email, as you don’t know who did and did not click to view the entire message. 
  
  
• If your email is clipped, the readers who click to view the entire message will not be tracked and will not appear as part of your click-through rate. This is because the clipping happens within the subscriber’s email client, not via a URL with click tracking.
  
  
• While email weight is just one factor in deliverability, it can negatively influence spam filters if your email appears too heavy.
  
  
• Additionally, Gmail strips out <style> tags from the clipped portion, which may cause your email's appearance to be altered.
  
  
• Ultimately, avoiding email clipping is crucial to maintaining readability and engagement, as even if your newsletter reaches the inbox, it’s less likely to be fully read if it's clipped.

---

Best practices to lower email weight

If your email weight exceeds the recommended limit, here are some quick ways to reduce the weight of your code: 

• Streamline your content and elements: Remove any unnecessary text, images, or design elements that add extra code.
  
  
• Reduce the number of URLs: URLs can contribute more to the code weight than expected, and each additional link adds to the total. Be mindful of using link shorteners or branded URLs, as they can significantly increase the code weight.
  
  
• Watch image use: While image files themselves don’t count toward the 102 KB limit, the HTML code to display them does.
  
  
• Remove extra formatting: Before copying and pasting content into beehiiv, verify that there isn’t any extra formatting code by removing formatting. To do this, right-click where you want to paste your content in the post editor and select Paste and Match Style from the menu options.
  
  
• Use ‘Read more’ links: If you don’t want to reduce any part of your email, creating a longer version on the web and linking to it from your email for your subscribers to read more is a great way to avoid clipping.