How to manage open tracking consent?

On this page, the following topics are covered:

• Why open tracking now needs consent in France and Italy
• How open tracking works in Mail+
• Determine the size of your French or Italian audience
• Choose the right tracking setting for your account
• Manage consent in your permissions and forms
• Deadlines to be aware of
• Other changes to keep in mind

Why open tracking now needs consent in France and Italy

Regulators in France (CNIL) and Italy (Garante) treat the pixel used to measure email opens as equivalent to a cookie. Before sending marketing emails with open tracking enabled to contacts in these countries, you generally need consent to:

• send marketing emails
• track opens

Consent to be tracked is treated as its own permission, separate from consent to receive marketing email, and contacts must be able to withdraw it independently. For example, they should be able to turn tracking off while remaining subscribed.

Some examples of situations that typically do not require this consent:

• basic deliverability monitoring, such as confirming that an email reached an inbox at a technical level, without storing data against an individual contact
• identifying inactive contacts for database hygiene, provided the data used is minimal and not retained for any other purpose

How open tracking works in Mail+

Open tracking is controlled at the account level, in the Mailing reporting settings under Preferences. You cannot turn it on or off per mailing or per contact. It is either on or off for the whole account. See Preferences for where to find this setting and how to change it.

Determine the size of your French or Italian audience

Before changing any settings, check how many contacts in your lists are based in France or Italy. This will not give you an exact list, since many French and Italian contacts use Gmail or Outlook addresses, but checking common local domains gives a useful indication.

• France: @orange.fr, @wanadoo.fr, @laposte.net, @sfr.fr, @neuf.fr, @cegetel.net, @club-internet.fr, @numericable.fr
• Italy: @libero.it, @virgilio.it, @iol.it, @inwind.it, @blu.it, @alice.it, @tim.it, @tin.it, @tiscali.it

Choose the right tracking setting for your account

Once you know your exposure, choose one of the following approaches:

• Few or no French/Italian contacts: you can leave open tracking on, as long as you do not send tracked emails to non-consented contacts in these countries. Suppress or remove them from your sending lists if needed. See Manage consent in your permissions and forms for how to identify and flag them.
• Large French or Italian audience, single environment: turn off open tracking at the account level. Collecting opt-ins alone does not make selective tracking compliant, because the open-tracking setting applies to the whole account. Mail+ cannot fire the tracking pixel for consented contacts only while withholding it from others on the same account.
• Large French or Italian audience, multiple Mail+ environments: use a separate environment for your French and Italian audience and turn off open tracking there, so tracking can stay enabled in your other environment(s).

Manage consent in your permissions and forms

The setup below applies in two situations: flagging which French or Italian contacts to suppress from tracked mailings if you only have a few of them, and recording consent to keep using clicks as a proxy for opens once you have turned off the tracking pixel. In both cases, you need a way to record and manage status per contact.

Existing contacts

• France: contacts had to be notified and given the chance to object by 14 July 2026. If you notified them in time and they did not object, you can continue tracking their opens. If you did not notify them, turn off tracking for them until they actively opt in.
• Italy: contacts added before around 29 April 2026 can still be tracked for now, but must be notified and given a separate opt-out before 28 October 2026, for example through a link to your permissions page.

New contacts

Capture tracking consent at the moment a contact opts in. Tracking consent must be a separate permission from the permission to receive marketing email, and independently revocable, so a contact can turn tracking off later while staying subscribed. It may be requested in the same step as the marketing email opt-in, as long as each permission is clearly labelled and can be chosen independently.

Set this up in Mail+

Follow the setup steps in Permissions and Unsubscribe packages to configure this:

1. Create a separate permission for tracking consent (or a suppression flag, if you are identifying French/Italian contacts to exclude), distinct from your permission for marketing emails.
2. Create an unsubscribe package based on permissions, so contacts can opt out of tracking consent and marketing emails independently.

On your forms:

1. Add a distinct, unticked field for tracking consent, worded separately from the email opt-in.

In your mailings and automations:

1. Create separate mailings and automations for contacts who have given tracking consent (or should be suppressed) and contacts who have not.

Deadlines to be aware of

Other changes to keep in mind

• You can no longer use opens as a filter when creating a dynamic list.

If you also use Spotler CRM

If you also use Spotler Activate