Font links are counted as clicks in Pardot!
BEE Pro becomes Beefree
We're still the same design suite you know and love, just with a new name. Our team is working hard to update our documentation, but you might still see some information or screenshots that are out of date.
Some customers have reported an issue where outside fonts are being counted as clicks in Pardot and some other applications. Why? What can be done about it?
If this sounds like the problem you might be having, read on.
There are two ways to import custom fonts in HTML files: one is via a specific <link> HTML tag, the other is with via a @import CSS directive.
The Beefree builder uses the first method as we have found that it grants broader compatibility with email clients.
Unfortunately, there are applications - like Pardot - that have decided to track the loading of the custom font as a click in the email: this creates conflicts and alters the results of your email campaign statistics.
We have tried to contact Pardot to alert them about this unusual behaviour, but until now they have not been available to discuss the matter with us.
On our side, we plan to run a new analysis of whether or not changing the custom font importing method still creates rendering issues with some email clients.
In the meantime, we can suggest a manual workaround that will help when using Beefree-designed emails with Pardot and other applications.
Here's the procedure:
- Download the HTML or ZIP file from your Beefree account
- Open index.html and locate the line in which the <link> tag with the font is located (usually around line 14). Example for "Montserrat" font:
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
- Delete that line and insert the following code block:
<style type="text/css">
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat:400,700')
</style>
Save your HTML file and import it into Pardot.
This should solve your issue.
In the meantime, we encourage you to notify Pardot's customer support about this issue as we believe that they could address the problem on their side, and there are many companies designing email templates with Beefree and then using them in Pardot. :-)
Comments
9 comments
If I have more than one font, should I add <style type>, then close it </style> to each font, or should I add just one <style type...> and </style> to the whole set?
Hi Mayla,
If you have multiple fonts, you can go within the same <style> tag.
Thanks!
Should I do the same with the <link href="https://use.typekit.net/pkx5djy.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">, or only the fonts?
Do you know why the fonts pull through on a desktop but not mobile (both in Outlook)? This is the same email on different devices. Sent with Pardot. Screenshots of both below.
Hi Julia,
Yes, to answer your first question, follow the above instructions. Here is some additional documentation using custom fonts.
As for the font not rendering in the mentioned email client, you are using a web font; there are various email clients that do not support web fonts.
The font links are staying in the HTML even after the offending fonts are removed from the email in BEE!
This is grossly throwing off the click counts of our emails (with 5-6 different font links in the email) and I have to manually remove them every time I copy the HTML into Pardot. This extra step is getting tiresome.
The only remedy I have discovered is to completely recreate the email without the fonts.
What's the recommended course of action here? Can BEE insert a line of code that removes the unused fonts' links before exporting the code?
Hi there! This is a current limitation of the BEE builder. Once a web font is used in a design created in BEE, it will always populate in the export file, even if it's been removed.
With that said, we know this behavior can be frustrating in certain use cases - particularly if you're using Pardot. We're currently working with our developers to resolve this. I'll be sure to pass your feedback along as well!
What is the update here? This seems like a really simple fix to an issue that is destroying our email click metrics.
Hi! We are currently working on this issue. I will set a reminder to reach out to you when we have a fix released for this. We appreciate your patience.
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