Answers.Body: <p>Interesting. I can understand that CiviCRM would see it is an click-through link.</p>
  
  <p>Although external CSS and fonts is very normal for web sites, it is not for emails.</p>
  
  <p>Both Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor advise you to only use inline CSS.</p>
  
  <p>The reason for this is that it is hardly predictable what different mail readers do with the external css. To have a reliable idea how your email will look for your Mailing subscribers it is better to avoid external css.</p>
  
  <p>I would advise you to follow the email rules as shown on the Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor pages for CiviCRM too.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://templates.mailchimp.com/getting-started/html-email-basics/" rel="nofollow">http://templates.mailchimp.com/getting-started/html-email-basics/</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://www.campaignmonitor.com/dev-resources/guides/coding/" rel="nofollow">https://www.campaignmonitor.com/dev-resources/guides/coding/</a></p>
  
  <p><em>Addition:</em></p>
  
  <p>Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp do a last minute check and make all css'es inline just before sending. They both have published their inline css tool for us to use. The MailChimp version is the best in my experience:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/inline-css" rel="nofollow">http://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/inline-css</a> </p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-01-28T18:33:27.143Z
Answers.Text: I did wonder about the usage in email, but wierdly enough the template was adapted from a Campaign Monitor one (and so I assumed they'd know what they were doing!).
Answers.UserDisplayName: Ollie M
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-07-21T20:03:59.443Z
Answers.Text: The reason is that Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp do a last minute check and make all css'es inline just before sending.
  
  The MailChimp version is the best imo, we can use it too :)
  
  http://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/inline-css/
Answers.UserDisplayName: Catorghans
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-01-28T17:47:01.840Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-07-22T11:50:42.890Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2016-07-22T11:50:42.890Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Catorghans
Body: <p>I have noticed that in our CiviMail ''Mail clickthroughs' reports, styling links are sometimes being reported as 'clicks' when they are loaded which is skewing our click rate reporting.</p>
  
  <p>E.g. The report shows one of the clickthrough URLs as:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><code>https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans:400,700,400italic,700italic</code></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Which is presumably being caused by the following in the email template being automatically loaded:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><code>&lt;style type="text/css"&gt; @import
    url(https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans:400,700,400italic,700italic);
    &lt;/style&gt;</code></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Have I just implemented the code wrong in the email, or is this a general problem with using references to external styles/fonts in CiviMail?</p>
  
  <p>Apologies if I'm just being really thick here...</p>
  
Tags: <civimail>
Title: Email css and fonts being miscounted as 'clicks' in CiviMail Clickthrough Reports
ThreadText: # Email css and fonts being miscounted as 'clicks' in CiviMail Clickthrough Reports
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2016-01-28)
  
  I have noticed that in our CiviMail ''Mail clickthroughs' reports, styling links are sometimes being reported as 'clicks' when they are loaded which is skewing our click rate reporting.
  
  E.g. The report shows one of the clickthrough URLs as:
  
  > `https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans:400,700,400italic,700italic`
  
  Which is presumably being caused by the following in the email template being automatically loaded:
  
  Have I just implemented the code wrong in the email, or is this a general problem with using references to external styles/fonts in CiviMail?
  
  Apologies if I'm just being really thick here...
  
  **Tags:** civimail
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2016-01-28. Score: 4 | Accepted answer
  
  Interesting. I can understand that CiviCRM would see it is an click-through link.
  
  Although external CSS and fonts is very normal for web sites, it is not for emails.
  
  Both Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor advise you to only use inline CSS.
  
  The reason for this is that it is hardly predictable what different mail readers do with the external css. To have a reliable idea how your email will look for your Mailing subscribers it is better to avoid external css.
  
  I would advise you to follow the email rules as shown on the Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor pages for CiviCRM too.
  
  <http://templates.mailchimp.com/getting-started/html-email-basics/>
  
  <https://www.campaignmonitor.com/dev-resources/guides/coding/>
  
  *Addition:*
  
  Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp do a last minute check and make all css'es inline just before sending. They both have published their inline css tool for us to use. The MailChimp version is the best in my experience:
  
  <http://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/inline-css>
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: I did wonder about the usage in email, but wierdly enough the template was adapted from a Campaign Monitor one (and so I assumed they'd know what they were doing!).  
  > **username_1**: The reason is that Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp do a last minute check and make all css'es inline just before sending.  The MailChimp version is the best imo, we can use it too :)  http://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/inline-css/  
  
  ---
  
  