This article is for general informational purposes and isn't legal advice.
As the sender, you remain responsible for your own compliance. We advise you to work with your legal or privacy team to confirm how these requirements apply to your marketing communications.
Open tracking measures how many contacts open your email campaigns. It relies on a tracking pixel, which is a small, invisible image added to each email you send. Open tracking consent is stored against each contact, and either you or the contact can change it.
Some EU regulators, including France's data protection authority (the CNIL) and Italy's data protection authority (the Garante), have published guidance on consent for tracking pixels in email. Their guidance treats consent to receive marketing email as separate from consent to open tracking. Whether and how it applies to you is a decision for you and your privacy team.
About open tracking consent
Consent to receive your marketing email isn't the same as consent to have opens tracked. Some regulators treat open tracking as a separate activity that needs its own consent, and an easy way to withdraw it.
Each contact has one of three open tracking consent statuses:
Status | What it means | Tracking pixel |
Opted in | The contact has agreed to open tracking | Added |
Opted out | The contact has declined open tracking | Not added |
Not set | No consent decision has been recorded | Added |
All contacts start as Not set. Not set isn't consent. It records that the contact hasn't made a decision, and it keeps your existing tracking behaviour in place when you turn the setting on.
Because Not set contacts are still tracked, turning the setting on doesn't change anything by itself. You know your audience, so you decide which contacts to opt out.
When the setting is off, open tracking consent isn't applied, so all your campaigns include a tracking pixel as normal. You need the setting on to add a consent link to a campaign. If you turn the setting off afterwards, any links you've already sent keep working. Dotdigital still stores each contact's preference, and those preferences take effect again when you turn the setting back on.
There are two ways to set a contact's open tracking consent:
The contact opts in or out themselves, using a link in one of your campaigns.
You opt contacts in or out in bulk, using a segment.
Open tracking consent applies to contacts already in your account. It isn't captured when you collect a contact, so sign-up forms, landing pages, and integrations don't set it. New contacts arrive as Not set, which means their campaigns include a tracking pixel. If you need to record consent when you collect a contact, you'll need a process outside Marketing for now. Collecting consent isn't enough on its own. New contacts are tracked by default, so you also need to opt out the ones who didn't consent. Do this in bulk using a segment.
Enable open tracking consent for your account
Select the Account menu icon, then go to Settings > General > Account settings.
Under Email regulatory settings, for Allow contacts to opt out of email open tracking, select Yes.
Select Save settings.
Once this setting is enabled, you can add an open pixel opt-out link to your campaigns, and update open tracking consent in bulk for your segments.
Opt out the contacts who need it
Turning the setting on doesn't change how your campaigns are tracked. Every contact starts as Not set, and Not set contacts are still tracked, so nothing changes until you opt contacts out or they opt themselves out.
If you send to contacts in countries where open tracking needs separate consent, opt those contacts out when you turn the setting on. Create a segment of the contacts you want to opt out, for example your contacts in France and Italy, then update their consent in bulk.
Add an open tracking consent link to a campaign
Your contacts need a way to change their own consent. Add a tracking pixel opt-out link to your campaign, which takes them to their preference page.
In your campaign or template, select the text you want to turn into a link, then expand the link type menu to open the Add a link dialog.
Select Open tracking opt-out.
For Text, enter the wording your contacts select to open their preference page.
Optionally, for Link title, enter a title.
Select Insert.
Place your link in your footer, alongside your unsubscribe link.
Untrack your links to keep opt-outs effective
A click on a tracked link registers an open, even for a contact who's opted out of open tracking. When you add a link to a campaign, select Do not track link to prevent this. System-generated links, such as your unsubscribe link and the open tracking opt-out link, aren't tracked.
If you convert an HTML campaign to a plain text campaign, your links become tracked again. Select Do not track link for each one after you convert. This doesn't affect the plain text version of an HTML campaign.
Update open tracking consent in bulk
Bulk updates are good for contacts you've already identified. For example, you can create a segment of your contacts in France, then opt that whole segment out in one action.
Before you start
To update consent in bulk, you need a segment containing the contacts you want to update.
To target a specific market, your contacts need country or region data stored against them.
In Marketing, create a segment of the contacts you want to update.
Go to Audience > Segments, then select each segment you want to update.
Expand MORE ACTIONS, then select Update open tracking consent.
Choose Opt out to stop tracking pixels being added to your email campaigns, or Opt in to allow them.
Select Update consent.
What to expect when contacts opt out
When a contact opts out, the campaigns you send afterwards don't include a tracking pixel for them, so they record no new opens.
Campaigns you'd already sent still contain that contact's tracking pixel. If they reopen one of those emails, it can still register an open.
Opting out doesn't delete the open data already collected for that contact. It stays in your account, and you can still use it in reports, segments, and programs.
Contacts who opt out register no opens from new campaigns. Your open rates fall as a result, and these contacts can appear unengaged in your reports and segments.
Anything that depends on open data is affected for these contacts, including:
Engagement-based segments and engagement reporting
ReMail, which resends to contacts who didn't open
Programs using an open as a condition or a decision
This setting controls open tracking only. It doesn't affect click tracking, link tracking, or unsubscribes.