GMail Clipping Killed My Open Rate
A lesson from the trenches...open rates are drastically affected when your email gets "clipped" by Gmail.
Seasoned email marketers & newsletter publishers probably already know this. This is a PSA for those of us who didn't. Gmail clips your message if it is over 102KB. The reader sees this at the end of your newsletter: "message clipped. view entire message" link.
If your tracking pixel is in the footer of your newsletter (like AWeber and most other email service providers) unless the reader clicks that "view entire message" link, you will not get an open hit.
I discovered this after my open rate plummeted for this week's issue of Scrappy MarTech (was 18% v. an average 45%). I looked at the spam score using [mail-tester[(https://mail-tester.com), scrutinized my subject line, and resigned myself to heartbreak that this just wasn't an interesting issue. 💔
As I was about to resend to "unopens" to try to salvage it, and I noticed my own email was tagged as "unopened". What?! I absolutely opened my own newsletter! Digging further, the message was clipped in Gmail (the very last line). After "view entire message", I was tagged as open. AWeber support confirms these findings.
So...if you didn't know, now you know!
Yeah, I try to keep my newsletters under the size content to keep it from getting clipped. Substack offers a useful tool that warns you when you approach the limit.
Gmail is tough, but we all use it. I've attempted to try Hey.com, but could never really get into the experience. I wish gmail had a "newsletters" tab.
Yup. I wish gmail had a "yes I double opted-in to this so it goes to the inbox" algorithm.
Google does not care about your business.
Google cares about users and user experience.
Same things in other niches e.g. SEO passages.
I can't believe I am reading this...🤦♂️
If Google cares about user experience, it must have an insanely weird way of showing it:
So, no, Google doesn't care about its users. NO.
We both have different angles when looking at this:
I personally never create ad campaigns using mobile phone, same applies to GA.
Most website owners use computer for this purpose.
Yes Google care about common users , but not webmasters or business owners.
When I wrote the 3 points, they are irrespective of each other - I don't mean using GA in mobile.
Google is way too big to be stupid only on one platform - GA sucks on all platforms. Same as for Google Ads.