Email tracking pixels are becoming a consent issue — starting in EMEA

TL;DR: France and Italy have issued guidance on email tracking pixels. These developments raise questions for organizations using open tracking. Outreach provides configurations to manage open tracking across an organization and individual emails and templates. Each organization is responsible for assessing its own obligations and selecting the approach that fits its use case.

Email open tracking has run quietly in the background of B2B sales and marketing for years. Recent developments in France and Italy have prompted customers to ask more questions about how they use open tracking and which configurations are available in Outreach.

This post provides a high-level overview of those developments and the product configurations available in Outreach. It does not provide legal guidance or identify the configuration that is appropriate for a particular organization or use case.

Where EMEA stands today

France's data protection authority, the CNIL, published a recommendation on email tracking pixels in April 2026. The recommendation applies France's existing framework for cookies and similar technologies to email pixels: because a tracking pixel causes the recipient's device to send information back to the sender, the CNIL treats it as accessing the recipient's device. On that basis, the CNIL's position is that using pixels to measure email opens or build engagement insight generally calls for the recipient's prior consent, subject to limited exemptions for purposes such as security and certain deliverability measurement. The recommendation is guidance rather than a new statute, and it describes a transition process for addresses already collected before publication.

Italy's data protection authority, the Garante, moved on its own parallel track, with a separate compliance deadline landing in late October 2026. Different mechanism, different timeline, similar conclusion: an invisible pixel that reads data off a recipient's device generally needs permission first.  Taken together, the two authorities are approaching email open tracking as an activity that generally calls for the recipient's permission first, rather than one that runs automatically in the background

Outreach provides configurations that customers can use as part of their own approach to managing email open tracking.

What this means for your team

These developments are prompting organizations to review how they use email open tracking and the configurations available in their sales and marketing tools. As teams revisit this with their privacy and legal advisors, a few practical questions tend to come up: which regions they send to, what they actually use open data for (for example, reporting, send-time optimization, or engagement scoring), and how easily they can adjust tracking settings if their approach changes. Each organization should determine how its use of open tracking fits its own legal and privacy assessment. The relevant tooling question is whether its teams can manage tracking settings in a way that supports that approach.

Where Outreach fits in

Outreach provides configurations that let customers manage whether email open tracking is available across their organization.

When open tracking is enabled at the organization level, users can manage open-tracking settings for individual emails and email templates.  

For step-by-step instructions, see our knowledge base article, How to Enable or Disable Email Open and Click Tracking in Outreach at All Levels. The article explains the available product configurations for open and click tracking.

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Frequently asked questions

Why is Outreach sharing this update?

Customers have asked about recent developments in France and Italy related to email open-tracking pixels. We are sharing information about the open-tracking configurations available in Outreach.

What about click-tracking requirements?

This post addresses recent questions about email open tracking. Click tracking is a separate product feature, and organizations should assess its use based on their own legal and privacy analysis.  Outreach provides click-tracking configurations, which are a separate feature with separate available settings.

Where can I find instructions for managing tracking configurations?

Visit our knowledge base article, How to Enable or Disable Email Open and Click Tracking in Outreach at All Levels, for step-by-step product instructions.  

A note on this post

This post is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It does not determine the legal requirements applicable to email open tracking, click tracking, or any other technology. Each organization is responsible for assessing its own obligations and determining the appropriate approach with its legal and privacy advisors.

If you haven't already, this is a good moment to loop in your privacy or legal team to review how your organization uses open tracking today, across every region you send to, and where your current setup lines up with your own read of the landscape. Then review the Outreach configurations available to you.

Have questions about how the tracking configurations work in practice? Reach out to your Outreach CSM or visit our support portal.

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