How to Set 'mailto' Links to Open in Gmail by Default for Your Audience

We always have seen 'mailto' links on web pages that open the default email client on the computer. We don't usually use these mail clients unless for professional reasons.

You will use a mail client if your job demands you to. Unless, a browser with a Gmail window will be comfortable, always.

The same happens with the audience of your web content. Most of them don't use default email client software, no Outlook on Windows, no Mail on Mac.

If you are a web content writer or a web designer who puts click-to-action 'mailto' links on the webpage, this article is for you.

Because the opening of the default email client on the computer will shut them off from sending you an email, as they wouldn't have set it up first hand.

Or maybe they don't know how to set it up or use it.

Your customers belong to all types, techies, noobs, mediocre (Sorry! But they will be having half-tech knowledge and assume they know it all). Easing them all with a simple emailing process will help you gather more leads. And you won't need to blame your perfectly designed webpages or hosting servers for speed or rendering.

If we could make the links open in a new Gmail tab on the web browser, it would be more sophisticating for them to write a 'Subject', 'Body', and hit that 'Send' button.

Then how to make 'mailto' links open in Gmail in a new browser tab?

It's no rocket science. If you have a little knowledge of the URL structures of Gmail, you will understand how it works.

When you want to use a 'mailto', instead of the default notation, use a normal anchor text directing it to the following URL:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&to=AMFASTECHGMAIL.COM&su=MAIL_TO_GMAIL_EXAMPLE&body=BODY&bcc=INFO@AMFASTECH.COM

This URL is safe and will open Gmail compose window in a new tab on the web browser.

Let's customize the URL:

Do not change the URL until https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1.

The customization you wanted to do starts with a '&' symbol.

Replace AMFASTECH@GMAIL.COM with your email ID; to which you want to receive emails.

Replace MAIL_TO_GMAIL_EXAMPLE with the subject of your choice.

Replace BODY with the body of the email.

Replace INFO@AMFASTECH.COM with the BCC email ID of your choice.

You may exclude some of the fields from the URL and trim them to your need. They will look as follows:

Mailing URL with 'To' field only: https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&to=AMFASTECHGMAIL.COM

Keep the 'To' field as mandatory as it needs a receiver's email ID to send the email. It is as same as mailto:amfastech@gmail.com.

Mailing URL with 'To' field and 'Subject' together: https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&to=AMFASTECHGMAIL.COM&su=MAIL_TO_GMAIL_EXAMPLE

Mailing URL with 'To' and 'Bcc' fields: https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&to=AMFASTECHGMAIL.COM&bcc=INFO@AMFASTECH.COM

You may add or remove the sections of the URLs starting with '&' to customize the pre-filled fields in the email.

Does this practice affect SEO?

Obviously, It will. The HTML elements are to define the structure of the webpage for crawlers. They would understand the information enclosed inside different HTML elements, and index the pages. Using an anchor tag in place of 'mailto' will not majorly affect SEO but the crawlers might not find email IDs from your webpage semantically.

I am hoping the intelligent algorithms will figure out this practice and treat the 'Gmail compose' links as the same as 'mailto' links.

Hope that helped!

P.S. Comment below if you are facing any issues with the implementation. We will figure it out together.