Email Not Displaying Correctly in Gmail: Fix Button Clickable Area Collapse for Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) for Editorial & Content Newsletters
Editorial newsletters rely on content layout readability and structural text spacing. If fonts default to Times New Roman or layout borders break, subscriber engagement metrics suffer. Below is the targeted integration guide to fix Button Clickable Area Collapse inside Gmail App (iOS & Android) templates when using Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC).
Technical Breakdown
Gmail App (iOS & Android) uses the WebKit / Blink which lacks support for standard rendering rules. This causes Button Clickable Area Collapse elements to break or collapse when rendering templates.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) Behaviors
SFMC's Content Builder wraps block exports in div frames that can break conditional comments. Additionally, AMPScript calls for personalizations can trigger parsing errors if they are inside MSO conditional comments. Ensure your AMPScript tags are evaluated *outside* the VML blocks. Keep your editorial body clean. Strip redundant CSS class definitions using Vaporize to ensure the newsletter stays under Gmail's 102KB clipping ceiling.
Remediation Code Block
To maintain button structural size and clickable areas, apply paddings to the parent table cell (td tag) rather than the link element, and format the anchor tag style to display: block. In your Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) campaign manager, make sure you configure your links to run via %%unsubscribe_url%%.
<table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse:collapse;">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#6366F1" style="padding: 10px 20px; border-radius: 4px;">
<a href="%%unsubscribe_url%%" style="color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none; display: block; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold;">Click Here</a>
</td>
</tr>
</table>Live Code Sandbox Test
How to Deploy inside Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC)
Copy the fixed VML or table wrapper code block from the remediation box above.
Create an 'HTML content' layout block in Content Builder. Paste the table structure. Enclose any custom merge tags inside standard AMPscript wrapper lines.