Setting Up Email Tracking Consent

What is it?

Product Functionality

Attentive uses email pixel tracking to record when a subscriber opens an email. The sign-up unit includes a consent checkbox, unchecked by default, that lets subscribers explicitly grant consent for open tracking. Marketers can add this checkbox to their sign-up units to collect consent at the point of sign-up.

Regional Availability

This capability is available to support regions with specific pixel tracking consent recommendations. Currently this functionality is available for France:

• Target Regions: France
• Impact: The opt-in behavior and UI settings apply only to subscribers located in (or sign-up units targeted to) France. Subscribers outside these regions will experience no changes.

How do I use it?

Follow these steps to add the pixel tracking consent to your active sign-up units.

Prerequisite: The Email Tracking Consent feature is only available on creatives that have France set as the target region.

1. In the left-side navigation menu, click Sign-up units.
2. Open a sign-up unit targeted to France.
   1. If you have a non-SAM account, click Edit Display Rules and confirm Country appears under Show and not under Hide.

2. If you have a SAM account, check the Region column on the Sign-up unit table, then confirm in Edit Display Rules that Country appears under Show and not under Hide.

3. Within the sign-up unit builder, click Email Tracking on the left-hand navigation panel.

4. Turn on the Email tracking toggle. This adds the opt-in checkbox to your sign-up unit in the same position as your legal language.

5. Review and customize the consent text so it reflects how your brand actually uses email tracking pixels (think: measuring engagement, personalizing content, product recommendations). Give it a quick read-through before you publish, just to make sure it sounds like you. Work with your legal team to determine the language required for your email program.

6. Click Save changes.

Email-Only Sign-Up Units

If you have an Email-Only sign-up unit collecting subscribers in France, review our rest-of-world (ROW) before publishing.

Managing Consent on Existing Subscriber Profiles

You can also view and manually update a subscriber's email tracking consent directly from their profile — handy for consent you've already collected somewhere else, like a third-party form.

Before you do: only grant consent manually if you've actually received confirmation from that subscriber through another channel. This isn't a toggle to flip just because you'd like the data — it's meant to reflect consent you already have.

1.  Go to Subscribers in the left-side navigation.

2.  Search for the subscriber by phone number or email address.

3.  Click the subscriber from the search results.

4.  Go to the Subscriptions tab.

a. To see more details about your subscriber’s activity, click View full profile.

5.  Find the Open tracking option in the channel/status column.

6.  Use the 3-dot menu to grant or revoke consent:

a. If consent is currently granted, select Revoke consent to opt the subscriber out.

b. If consent isn't granted, select Opt in consent to opt the subscriber in.

7. You can also update the consent attribute in bulk through the Subscriber Upload in Settings.

1. First make sure you have a list of subscribers in a CSV. One column should be for an email address, and the other should be a boolean for the email opt out consent attribute.
2. Go to Setup > Settings > Subscriber Upload > Upload subscriber file

c. Upload your CSV and click Continue

d. Make sure to map the email address column to Email address and the email opt out consent column to Opted out of email open tracking. Click Continue

e. Review the upload detail and then press Submit

What you won't find here: an aggregate view of which subscribers are opted in vs. out, and you can't segment on consent status yet — this will be coming later this year. If you need aggregated data, you can request a CSV export of consent status through Support or your CSM.

Collected consent for a subscriber somewhere outside Attentive, like a third-party pop-up? This is where you'd add it — see our best practices for rest-of-world (ROW) sign-up units for more on handling third-party consent.

Email Preferences for Existing Subscribers

Existing subscribers can update their own email tracking preference directly from your brand’s Email Preferences page — as long as that page is active and includes the Email Tracking layer.

1. Go to Setup > Settings > Email Settings > Preferences.
2. Activate your Email Preferences page by clicking Create if you haven’t already. If one’s already active, click Edit.
3. From the design preview, click Edit.
4. Add the Email Tracking layer from the Layers panel on the left.
5. From the Preference collection form settings on the right, scroll down to the Consent checkbox and click to toggle it on.

6. Confirm the pixel tracking toggle appears in the preview.
7. Click Save changes.

Who sees it: subscribers only see the opt-in checkbox if their Locale or Location (country, residence) is set to France. If you don’t send to subscribers who meet that condition, you can skip this step — everyone else will see the page exactly as they do today.

Consistent with sign-up units, subscribers here are opted out of pixel tracking by default too, so they’ll need to actively check the box to opt in.

Why should I use it?

• Regulatory Compliance: Supports your brand with updated privacy guidance from France’s data protection authority (CNIL).
• Subscriber Trust: Gives your international subscribers transparent control over their email tracking preferences at the point of sign-up.