FAQ for Email Open Tracking Consent in Selligent (CNIL Guidance)
This FAQ answers common questions about CNIL guidance for email open tracking and how Selligent helps you manage consent-based open tracking.
Note: This article explains product behavior in Selligent. It does not provide legal advice. Your organization is responsible for deciding which privacy requirements apply and how to meet them. Work with your legal or privacy team to confirm the right approach for your business.
What is the CNIL and what changed?
The CNIL, or Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libertés, is France’s data protection authority. It is responsible for enforcing privacy and data protection laws, including rules related to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ePrivacy.
In April 2026, the CNIL published guidance on tracking pixels in emails. The guidance clarifies expectations around consent, transparency, and the use of email open tracking for recipients in France.
Why did the CNIL issue this guidance?
The CNIL issued this guidance to help organizations use email tracking pixels in a more transparent and consistent way.
Email tracking pixels can show whether a recipient opened an email. When that information is linked to an individual recipient, it may be used for reporting, segmentation, profiling, personalization, or other marketing purposes.
The CNIL guidance helps organizations understand when consent may be required, when exemptions may apply, and how recipients should be informed.
Who is impacted by this guidance?
Your organization may be impacted if you send emails to recipients in France or process data related to email communications sent to French recipients.
This may include organizations that use Selligent for marketing campaigns, transactional messages, reporting, audience segmentation, or other customer engagement activities.
Your legal or privacy team should confirm whether the guidance applies to your organization and how it affects your email programs.
What are the main concerns the CNIL is addressing?
The CNIL guidance focuses on three main areas:
- Clear and valid consent for email open tracking.
- Transparency about how tracking data is collected and used.
- The ability to honor, withdraw, and prove recipient choices
These principles help protect recipient privacy while giving organizations clearer expectations for responsible email tracking practices.
How is Selligent responding?
Selligent provides functionality to help you manage consent-based email open tracking.
When this functionality is activated, Selligent checks whether consent is available before applying individual email open tracking. If consent is missing or withdrawn, individual open tracking is disabled for that recipient.
To use this capability, request activation through a Support ticket.
For implementation details, see User Guide: Managing Consent for Email Open Tracking in Selligent.
Does the email language determine whether consent-based open tracking applies?
No. The language of the email does not determine whether consent-based open tracking applies.
A recipient may receive emails in any language. Whether consent-based open tracking is required depends on your organization’s legal assessment of the recipient’s situation and the regulations that apply.
Selligent does not make this determination automatically. It provides tools that help you implement the approach that aligns with your legal and privacy obligations.
What happens if we do not enable consent-based open tracking?
If you do not enable consent-based open tracking, Selligent continues to behave as it does before the functionality is activated. Consent-based open tracking is not enabled by default.
Your organization should decide, together with your legal or privacy team, whether continuing with your existing tracking setup is appropriate.
Selligent provides the technical capabilities to support your compliance strategy, but it does not enforce a specific legal approach.
Is consent-based open tracking mandatory?
From a product perspective, consent-based open tracking is optional.
From a regulatory perspective, your organization should assess its obligations under CNIL guidance and any other applicable laws with your legal or privacy team.
If your organization determines that consent-based open tracking is required, Selligent provides functionality to support that implementation.
When should we communicate about email open tracking consent?
The timing and content of recipient communications depend on your organization’s legal interpretation and internal processes.
Some organizations may update preference centers, consent flows, privacy notices, or recipient communications before they enable consent-based open tracking. Others may still be assessing the impact with their legal and privacy teams.
We recommend preparing early. Review your consent strategy, prepare any required recipient communications, and test your implementation before any applicable deadline.
Do we need to update affected contacts within a specific timeframe?
Discuss this with your legal or privacy team. The CNIL guidance does not define a Selligent-specific technical delay, such as a fixed number of minutes, for updating a contact’s consent status.
From a product perspective, the key principle is that individual open tracking should only occur when you have a valid legal basis to do so. If your organization relies on consent, establish the recipient’s consent status before sending a tracked email.
Selligent lets you update consent as part of your onboarding, preference management, or data management process. For example, you can use preference centers, integrations, data synchronization, or stored procedures. Your timing and workflow should align with your organization’s legal interpretation and compliance strategy.
How can we track opens for transactional emails, such as password reset emails?
For transactional emails, such as password resets, account verification emails, order confirmations, invoices, or security notifications, certain exemptions may apply under CNIL guidance.
Your organization and legal team remain responsible for deciding whether a specific message qualifies for an exemption.
If you need to support exemption scenarios in Selligent, contact your Customer Success Manager or Support to discuss the available approach for your setup.
When will Selligent support exemption scenarios?
The first phase of consent-based open tracking focuses on collecting and respecting consent at email execution time.
Support for exemption scenarios, such as deliverability and transactional use cases, is planned for a later phase. A general availability date is not available yet.
When a confirmed delivery timeline is available, Selligent will communicate it through the usual product release channels. If exemption support is business-critical for your organization, contact your Customer Success Manager so your feedback can be shared with the product team.
Do we no longer add tracking pixels when there is no consent for open tracking?
When consent-based open tracking is active, Selligent checks the recipient’s consent status at email execution time.
If the recipient has consent for open tracking, open tracking works as expected.
If the recipient does not have consent for open tracking, and no applicable exemption is used, Selligent does not log an open-tracking event for that recipient. During the initial rollout, some emails may still technically contain tracking pixels because of existing technical dependencies. These pixels are not used to record opens when consent is missing. Over time, these tracking pixels will be phased out entirely for recipients without consent.
Can we use consent-based open tracking in Campaign, for example for newsletters?
Yes. After consent-based open tracking is enabled for your tenant, you can use the same consent preference model for Campaign.
For Campaign, consent can be managed through the Data Component. When an email is sent, Selligent checks the recipient's open tracking consent status:
- If the recipient has given consent, individual open tracking works as expected.
- If the recipient has not given consent, individual open tracking is disabled, and no tracking pixel is included for that recipient.
This is not a manual setting that turns open tracking on or off for each journey. The behavior is consent-driven.
Support for override scenarios, where legally justified exemptions may apply, is planned for a future enhancement. Your organization and legal team remain responsible for deciding whether an exemption applies.
Need help?
Create a ticket in the support portal if you encounter an issue or need assistance. If you do not have an account on the support portal, contact your Selligent representative.
