On April 14, 2026, the CNIL (France's data protection authority) published a binding recommendation on email tracking pixels. Except for a few exempted purposes, email tracking pixels require prior, explicit, and separate consent from your recipients. This recommendation only applies to marketing content sent to contacts based in France.

Read the CNIL recommendation

What this recommendation means for your email tracking

By default, Brevo embeds a tracking pixel in your emails to measure opens and record per-contact engagement data. Under the CNIL recommendation, collecting and storing that individual-level data requires explicit consent from each recipient, collected separately from consent to receive your emails.

This applies to all emails sent to contacts based in France, regardless of the sending channel you use (Email Campaigns, Automations, or Transactional email via SMTP or API).

➡️ To learn more about what is subject to the consent requirement, check the full CNIL recommendation.

To help you comply with this recommendation without losing visibility into how your contacts engage with your emails, Brevo introduces per-contact pixel tracking consent. This setting lets you track opens contact by contact, based on each contact's own answer, instead of applying an all-or-nothing rule to your whole list. You keep the engagement data that fuels your segmentation and personalization, while giving every contact real control over their own tracking preferences.

About per-contact pixel tracking consent

Per-contact tracking consent lets you continue collecting individual engagement data, such as opens, but only for contacts who have explicitly given permission. Activating it applies to every channel you send from: Email Campaigns, Automations, and transactional emails sent through SMTP or the API.

Per-contact tracking consent:

Once you activate per-contact tracking consent, Brevo automatically creates default contact attributes to manage each contact's tracking consent:

Step 1: Activate per-contact tracking consent

1. Click the account drop-down and go to Settings > Contacts > Per-contact pixel tracking consent.
   
2. Select Yes to activate per-contact consent management for every channel you send emails from: Email Campaigns, Automations, and transactional emails sent through SMTP or the API.
   

3. Configure your default behavior by setting Track contacts whose consent is unknown to either: 

   • Yes, contacts continue to be tracked while you progressively collect consent.
   • No, contacts are not tracked until they explicitly consent.
   ❗️ Important
   We strongly recommend setting this default behavior to No, as the CNIL recommends that, from July 14, 2026, you have to obtain your contacts’ consent before tracking email opens.
4. Click Save. All existing contacts are automatically set to unknown status.

Next, complete these additional steps:

• Add a pixel tracking consent checkbox to your forms
• Manage contacts added before you activated tracking consent
• Add an easy revoke consent link to your email footers
• Audit your transactional and automation flows for mixed-purpose sends
• Set pixel tracking consent if you send emails via the API

Step 2: Add a pixel tracking consent checkbox to your forms

Add a pixel tracking consent checkbox to every form where you collect information from your French contacts, including your sign-up forms and your profile update form. This lets your contacts choose whether they agree to be tracked, whether they are joining your list for the first time or updating their preferences.

Your contacts' answer is saved to the _PIXEL_TRACKING_CONSENT attribute on their contact profile, so you can filter and segment your contacts based on their tracking consent.

1. Open the form you want to edit, either your sign-up form, or profile update form.
2. From the Build tab, drag and drop a Checkbox field into your form.
3. In the Object type dropdown, select Contact.
4. In the Attribute list dropdown, select the _PIXEL_TRACKING_CONSENT attribute.
   
5. Next to the checkbox, enter a consent statement to ask for your subscribers' consent for pixel tracking. For example, "I agree to be tracked through email tracking pixels for personalized communications".
6. In the left panel, add a label name and a help text so your subscribers clearly understand that you will use tracking pixels to send them personalized communications.
7. Continue editing your form, then publish it.

➡️ To learn more about forms, check our dedicated articles Create or edit a sign-up form, or Create or edit a profile update form.

Step 3: Manage contacts added before you activated tracking consent

If you have French contacts who subscribed between April 14 and July 14, 2026, they may have been tracked before you had a way to collect their pixel tracking consent. Use one or both of the following options to bring these contacts up to date.

Add a pixel tracking consent checkbox to your profile update form

Ensure you added a pixel tracking consent checkbox to your profile update form so these contacts can share or change their consent at any time.  

➡️ To learn more about how to add a pixel tracking consent checkbox to your update profile forms, check our dedicated article Create or edit a profile update form.

(Optional) Manually remove your contacts' consent until they actively opt in

You can also decide to treat these contacts as if they had not given consent, until they tell you otherwise through your profile update form:

1. From the CRM > Contacts page, create a segment of contacts who meet all of the following conditions:
   • Contact attributes > _PIXEL_TRACKING_CONSENT > Not filled
   • Contact attributes > Creation date > Fixed period > 14/04/2026 - 14/07/2026
   • (Optional) The contact attribute that allows you to filter only French contacts
     
2. (Optional) Click Save as segment if you want to keep track of those contacts.
3. Click the checkbox on the left of the CONTACT column and click Select all contacts.
4. Click More actions > Edit.
5. In the Update the following attribute dropdown, select the PIXEL TRACKING CONSENT attribute.
6. In the PIXEL TRACKING CONSENT dropdown, choose No.
7. Click Update to confirm.

These contacts are considered as not tracked until they change their answer through your profile update form.

Step 4: Add an easy revoke consent link to your email footers

Give contacts ongoing control over their tracking consent by including a revoke consent link in your email footers. This lets recipients change their tracking pixel consent at any time, without friction. Once they click this link, your contact's pixel tracking consent attribute is automatically set to No.

Depending on your email editor, the procedure differs. Open the tab that matches your email editor:

Step 5: Audit your transactional and automation flows for mixed-purpose sends

The exemption depends on the email's purpose, not its sending channel. If any of your transactional or automation flows send commercially motivated content, individual tracking in those sends requires consent. Use the following checklist to audit your flows:

• Automations mixing transactional and promotional steps
  A welcome series may start with a genuine transactional email (exempt) and then move into promotional content (not exempt). The exemption does not carry across the full automation.
• Transactional templates used for promotional content
  If a template is populated with offers, recommendations, or upsell content, it is not exempt regardless of how it is sent.
• SMTP API integrations sending both transactional and promotional emails
  If the same API key is used for both purposes, ensure you collect explicit tracking consent before sending promotional emails. You can use the per-contact consent feature to manage tracking at the contact level across your integration.
• Behaviorally triggered promotional emails
  Abandoned cart, price drop alerts, and browse abandonment emails are commercially motivated. Their trigger mechanism does not change their commercial nature.

Step 6: Set pixel tracking consent for emails sent via the API

If you send transactional emails through Brevo's API, after activating per-contact tracking consent in your settings, you need to set each recipient's consent by adding a contactPixelTrackingConsent field to each contact in the to, cc, and bcc arrays of your API call.

cc/bcc/to: [{
        name:"abc",
        email:"abc@gmail.com",
        contactPixelTrackingConsent: true
    },
    {
        name:"bcd",
        email:"bcd@gmail.com",
        contactPixelTrackingConsent: false
    },
    {
        name:"cde",
        email:"cde@gmail.com", unknown
    }
    ]

The following table lists the values you can use for this field:

➡️ To learn more about sending a transactional email via API, check our API reference documentation Send a transactional email.

Specific considerations for B2B communications

The CNIL recommendation makes clear that the consent requirement for tracking pixels is independent of the consent regime for sending the email.

A B2B prospecting email sent under professional exemptions is legally sendable without consent. However, inserting a tracking pixel into that email still requires separate, explicit tracking consent from the recipient.

For B2B cold outreach and prospecting sequences, use per-contact tracking consent to collect explicit tracking consent before deploying individual pixels. Deliverability exemptions apply in B2B under the same conditions as in B2C.

❓ FAQs

Expand the accordions below to find answers to common questions about the CNIL recommendation on tracking pixels.

⏭️ What's next

• Create a sign-up form
• Update your contacts details and preferences (profile update form)
• GDPR-compliant sign-up form guidelines
• Optimize and clean your contact list

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