Don’t Get Clipped: Keeping Email Simple
Have you ever poured your heart into creating the perfect email campaign, only to have it clipped in your customer’s inbox, never to be viewed properly? You’re not alone. And, good news, you can overcome clipping with a few key strategies in place. In this blog, we asked lead email developer, Neus Blanco, to give us her top tips and best practices to avoid clipping. Here’s what she had to share.
What is Clipping?
Email clipping occurs when an email message is cut off or shortened by an email provider, like Gmail, due to exceeding specified size limits. Gmail will clip messages equal to 102 kB and larger. This practice aims to enhance user experience and prevent data overload. Unfortunately for marketers, clipping cuts off crucial information and visual elements from being seen in your email and can negatively impact your analytics.
5 Strategies to Avoid Clipping
Your goal should be to condense your message to its core and focus on delivering only the vital details. Think of your email as a teaser, a snapshot that leaves subscribers wanting more and clicking on your CTA. Here’s what we recommend.
1. Send Your Audience to a Landing Page
While building an email, remember—your email is not a landing page. But it can be the perfect hook for one. Avoid overloading your email with more information than it can handle. Use enticing product photos, concise copy, and outbound links to support your message and seal the deal. If necessary, you can also break up your message into multiple emails as part of a journey.
2. Let Your Hero Image Tell the Story
To avoid clipping, every element in your email should be indispensable to your message. Limit the amount of photos you include and let your hero image serve as a visual storyteller. A single, purposeful image, simple supporting copy, and a CTA can do more to capture the customer’s attention than displaying an entire catalog in one email.
3. Choose Text Links Over CTA Buttons
Choosing a text link is a strategic move to keep your email code lean and prevent clipping. Additionally, by favoring simplicity, you enhance accessibility and streamline the overall design. This approach ensures that your subscribers enjoy a clean, efficient layout while also reducing the risk of your message getting clipped.
4. Build for Responsiveness
Consistency is key—your emails should seamlessly adapt to the diverse landscape of devices, so the viewing experience is the same everywhere. To keep your code simple and decrease the chance of clipping, use styles on your code so you don’t have to build separate module structures. This will help you make a lasting impression, regardless of the device, without lengthening your code.
5. Keep it Simple
All of our tips can be summarized into 3 words: keep it simple. For every element in your email, ask yourself: does this significantly enhance my message, or is it mere embellishment? Like a digital spring cleaning, minimize your code by discarding all unnecessary elements—say goodbye to double spaces, extraneous line breaks, and any other redundancy. Stick with essential images and design styles that align with your brand and avoid unnecessary complexity. This extra cleaning can help you eliminate the last bit of code needed to send your email without experiencing clipping.
Request an Email Audit from Ragnarok
Are you currently experiencing clipping or want to improve your emails? Take the first step with a personalized email audit. At Ragnarok, our consultants are here to help. From simplifying your email code, to designing clear and effective messages, providing audits and sharing strategies like these, we want to see your emails clip-free and effectively building meaningful connections with your audience.
Let’s make every email count – request an audit with us today!
