Understanding email tracking requirements in France and Italy and how they impact Platformly users

Disclaimer: The information in this article is for general information and is not for legal advice. For guidance on how these requirements apply to your business, consult your legal counsel.

Recent guidance published by data protection authorities in France and Italy introduced stricter requirements around the use of tracking pixels in emails. In particular, it sets out when consent is required for email tracking and that such consent must be obtained separately from consent to receive marketing emails. Recipients must also be able to withdraw their consent to tracking without having to unsubscribe from marketing communications altogether.

What is an email tracking pixel?

Email tracking typically relies on a tracking pixel: a tiny, invisible 1×1 image embedded in an email and associated with a unique recipient identifier.
When the image is loaded, it can provide information such as:

• Email opens: Whether an email has been opened, including repeat opens.
• Date and time: When the email was opened.
• Location: An approximate location that may be inferred from the recipient's IP address.

In Platformly, email tracking has been used to collect engagement data for reporting purposes, including email opens.

Clicks can also be tracked through unique tracking links included in emails.

What France and Italy announced

France's CNIL and Italy's Garante have both published guidance concerning the use of tracking pixels in emails.

Under this guidance, tracking pixels used for marketing, profiling, campaign performance measurement, and similar purposes generally require the recipient's prior consent. Where consent is required, it must be specific to email tracking rather than bundled with consent to receive marketing communications.

Who is in scope

The requirements can apply when email tracking involves recipients protected by French or Italian privacy rules, even when the organization sending the emails is established elsewhere. Businesses sending emails to recipients in France or Italy should therefore assess whether their use of email tracking falls within the scope of the applicable guidance.

What requires consent vs. what may not

Uses of email tracking that generally require consent include:

• Open rate metrics: Measuring email opens and open rates for campaign performance and marketing analytics.
• Behavioral tracking: Using email engagement activity to understand or respond to recipient behavior.
• Open-based segmentation: Grouping or targeting contacts based on whether they opened specific emails or campaigns.
• Personalization and profiling: Using tracked behavior to personalize communications, optimize campaigns, or build recipient profiles.

Certain strictly necessary or technical uses may be exempt from consent requirements, depending on how they are implemented and the data collected.

Examples may include:

• Deliverability and technical monitoring: Certain limited uses designed solely to ensure that an email service functions correctly or to manage deliverability.
• Database hygiene: Certain limited processing intended to identify inactive addresses and maintain mailing lists, provided the data collected is limited to what is necessary and is not reused for other purposes.
• Security-related uses: Tracking that is strictly necessary for security or authentication purposes may qualify for an exemption.

These exemptions are limited and depend on the specific purpose and implementation of the tracking technology. Tracking used for marketing analytics, profiling, or campaign optimization generally requires consent.

Deadlines

France: The CNIL published its recommendation on April 14, 2026. For email addresses collected before that date, organizations were given a three-month transition period, until July 14, 2026, to inform recipients about the use of tracking pixels and provide an easy way to object. If this information was not provided during the transition period, organizations must now obtain consent where required or stop using tracking pixels that require consent. For email addresses collected from April 14, 2026 onward, the CNIL's consent requirements apply directly.

Italy: The Italian Garante's guidelines were published in the Official Gazette on April 29, 2026. Organizations were given six months from publication to bring their email tracking practices into compliance, making the compliance deadline October 29, 2026.

Further readings

Pixels de suivi dans les courriers électroniques : la CNIL publie ses recommandations pour mieux protéger la vie privée
Recommendation on tracking pixels in emails 
Linee Guida in materia di utilizzo di tracking pixel nelle comunicazioni di posta elettronica

How you are impacted as a Platformly user

To help ensure Platformly can be used in accordance with these requirements, we have disabled email open and click tracking across the platform.

Some email marketing platforms may choose to introduce additional consent management options that allow tracking to be enabled or disabled at the account, campaign, or individual contact level. However, this approach requires users to determine which contacts can be tracked, collect and manage the appropriate consent, and ensure that recipients can withdraw their tracking consent independently from their consent to receive marketing emails.

Rather than introducing this additional complexity and placing the responsibility for managing tracking consent on Platformly users, we have chosen a simpler and more consistent approach: email tracking will be disabled for all Platformly accounts and contacts.

As a result, Platformly will no longer collect or display email open and click tracking data. Features and reporting that rely on this data, including opens, clicks, open rates, click-through rates, and certain engagement-based metrics, will therefore no longer be available.

This change does not affect your ability to send marketing or transactional emails through Platformly. It only affects the collection and reporting of email engagement data that relies on tracking technologies.

Impact on automations and rules

Disabling email open and click tracking also affects any automations or rules that rely on these events.

If an automation or rule uses an email open or link click as a trigger or condition, Platformly will no longer be able to detect that event. As a result, contacts will not enter or progress through an automation based on an email being opened or a link being clicked.

If you currently have automations or rules that depend on email opens or clicks, we recommend reviewing them and replacing these conditions with other available triggers or criteria where appropriate.

This change does not affect email delivery or other email functionality that does not rely on open or click tracking.

Updated on: 18/09/2026