How to avoid Gmail’s guillotine 🔪🔪🔪

[Anyone can do this... and everyone should.]  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

​ Hey, Ever noticed that some emails in your inbox get cut off at the bottom? Worried this is happening to your newsletter? You're right to be concerned because the problem is more common than people realize, and more serious; it's far more than a mere annoyance or curiosity. I have the solution. And it's something anyone can do – and really should be doing – to ensure that all your wonderful words reach those expectant readers. Because nothing is more annoying than getting cut off mid— The Question I got an email from Tom in Chicago – thanks Tom! – who was surprised that my monster email last week didn't get cut off by Gmail somewhere in the middle, despite being over 4,000 words long. This awkward chopping is something that regularly happens to his own newsletters, and he was wondering if this was a limitation of MailerLite, or whether I was doing something specifically to avoid this fate as it never seemed to happen to my (often quite verbose) missives. This is one area where size really doesn't matter. It's Worse Than You Think Gmail seems to select emails at random, arbitrarily cuts them off part way through, and then inserts a rather non-obvious and uncompelling link to read the rest on a new tab — which most readers won't do, of course. You might have noticed that longer emails seem more likely to get the chop than shorter ones, but also that it wasn't universal and didn't conform to any obvious pattern. Aside from being a head-scratcher, this Gmail Guillotine is the bane of anyone with a newsletter because it doesn't just cut off your carefully crafted content – it causes all sorts of other problems too: *Email opens: it removes the HTML code used to track whether readers have opened your newsletter, making them look unresponsive or inactive. *Legal problems: your unsubscribe link also gets cut off – potentially putting you in breach of various laws like CAN-SPAM and GDPR. *Spam reports: you are in danger of being marked Spam because the recipient can't easily find that unsubscribe link for the same reason. *Reduced response: obviously any CTA in the second part of the email will see massively reduced responses from your readers. *Reader confusion: depending on the reader's device, it's not always obvious there is more to the email – an increasing problem as the links can be quite subtle on mobile (especially Android, which is 70% of the global mobile market BTW). In case you think I'm over-egging things, here's how it looks if you don't dodge the Gmail Guillotine: ​ ​ ​ Not exactly obvious there is more to the email, and not really enticing readers to click, is it? This isn't just affecting you but possibly some of the promotions you pay for also. I've seen emails from a range of promo sites – even the very biggest – get rudely truncated in this manner. Pour one out for the authors in the second part of that email. Yikes. A Simple Solution... Ish The cause of this phenomenon took some time deduce because, as mentioned, it seemed to affect longer emails more frequently than shorter ones, but it wasn't that simple. Some super-long emails never seemed to be affected, and occasionally I would see even a short email get sliced in half. But there did seem to be some kind of indirect correlation with length – at least some of the time. Turns out it's not the length of the email which matters, but the character count of the HTML. [Arcane self-publishing slash scammer trivia: this is pretty much how KENPC was calculated in the first iteration of Kindle Unlimited – yeah, it was that dumb and that easily gamed. A couple of us reported this directly to our contacts at KDP in the opening weeks but they didn't fix it for around a year, paying millions of dollars of our money to people who they knew were scamming the system.] Back to the problem at hand. Without getting too technical, emails are sent as a block of HTML code, and the nice pretty newsletters you generate in the interface of your chosen email marketing service are basically converted into code, sent across the internet tubes, and reassembled by Gmail as a nice pretty email again in your reader's Inbox. If the HTML code is over 102kb then Gmail gets out the guillotine. Yeah, that small. Each character of HTML will add a byte or two to that total, so if your email is just plain text then the limit is considerable – around 100,000 characters, or maybe 20,000 words. How is anyone hitting this limit, aside from Monsieur Proust? Yup. And here's why. Any time you add anything extra to an email, you are increasing the amount of HTML code, which in turn adds characters and kilobytes to that total. Standard formatting like bold or indent here and there will only add a modest amount, so I wouldn't worry too much about things like that. But if you have very fussy formatting all throughout your emails, or use one of those fancy email templates that companies like ConvertKit and MailerLite provide to their users, then there is a chance that this could be adding enough HTML to push you over the limit. At least, that's the very first thing I'd check if I was running into this issue. You know what doesn't increase the HTML size? The size of your images. Keeping images small is important for other reasons – so don't go wild here – but if you are troubleshooting this particular issue, just know that reducing the size of your images won't help you in this regard as they are stored externally and don't count towards your HTML size inthis regard. But having lots and lots of images can bring down the Gmail Guillotine though. Each separate image equals another chunk of HTML code to embed it in your email – and some of these email templates can be made of lots of little images or other bits of HTML code to make it all look so fresh and swishy, so be wary of those. Here's a short list of things to watch out for when troubleshooting this issue yourself, in rough order of likely suspects: Email templates. Fussy formatting more generally. Number of images. Number of links (for the same reason as images). Anything probably HTML heavy like an embedded survey. And then things like social media buttons at the bottom of my emails (note: these types of buttons are links and images – a twin threat). I'm not saying you can't have any of these things in your emails – clearly, I use these things regularly – but that's the list I would run through if I needed to solve this problem with my own newsletter. And perhaps if I was including something HTML-heavy like an embedded survey, I'd be sure to minimize the amount of images and links accompanying it – in that particular email certainly. At this point you might be thinking. "A rough guideline is handy, but how do I know how much HTML is actually in my email?" Mail Tester To The Rescue My favorite tool is free: Mail Tester. Before I hit my list, I always email a draft to Mail Tester first – which handily calculates the amount of HTML in your emails. Note: I don't send these test emails for that purpose, I do it to generally check deliverability issues, as Mail Tester will let you know if there is a problem with your email and give some kind of indication (ish) on how to fix it. One thing that Mail Tester flags is what's called the "HTML weight" of your emails – which is basically the amount of text versus the amount of non-text HTML code, as Gmail is suspicious of emails which have too much non-text HTML code as are often phishy. As such, this is one of the many things that can cause your emails to drop into Promotions/Spam so it's worth keeping an eye on, especially if you use a lot of links or images or fancy formatting. More relevant is this: the section which flags your HTML weight also indicates the HTML size of the email, so if you are running into issues with the Gmail Guillotine, this is where you can check your HTML size. For comparison, my 4,000-word email last week, which had several links and images too, was only around 37Kb so this should be easily doable for you. I recommend making Mail Tester part of your newsletter workflow. Mine generally goes like this: Draft email. Send to a dummy Gmail address to check if I'm hitting Inbox. Use Mail Tester to flag potential issues. Resolve any issues and re-test if necessary. Send my newsletter. This is usually very quick. Drafting the email is variable of course, but steps 2—5 there take me a couple of minutes so it's not impacting my workflow in a significant way. When you first start testing your emails, this will take a little longer as there are probably little things you are inadvertently doing which affect your deliverability. But once you have those down, you will fly through this process. Anyway, in terms of avoiding the Gmail Guillotine, there's only one thing you need to watch. Keep the HTML total below 102Kb and you should avoid the dreaded kiss of Gmail's blade. I Demand Answers This email was inspired by a question from you – well, not you specifically, unless you are Tom from Chicago, I guess. I'm starting a new segment – possibly a video thingy – where I answer all kinds of useful questions, and I want to keep this for the Decoders crowd first, i.e. you guys. So, if you have a burning question, on any topic pertaining to marketing, publishing, or writing, then simply hit Reply to this email. Make sure to include I DEMAND ANSWERS somewhere in your email, so I can filter all these messages in Gmail, give them priority, and keep everything organized. (Also because I am five years old, and find that amusing.) Please let me know if I can use your name/location/genre when answering your question publicly to personalise things a little. Anonymous is fine too. That's all he wrote, Dave P.S. Gazing wistfully this week with Blaze Foley and Clay Pigeons. Broomfield Business Park, Malahide, Co. Dublin K36 AT04 ​Unsubscribe | Update your profile​