Tracking settings

Flexmail brings your tracking settings together on one page with three tabs: Open tracking, Click tracking, and UTM tagging. Together, they determine whether and how opens and clicks are tracked for the contacts in your account. You can find them in Settings > Tracking. All admins have access by default. An admin can grant access to non-admin users.

For background information on why these settings exist, see Open tracking consent: what is changing and why?.

The settings

Open tracking (Open tracking tab) determines whether Flexmail tracks if and when recipients open your emails. If this is turned off, all contacts receive a pixel-free version of every campaign and no opens are recorded, even for emails already sitting in an inbox.

Open tracking consent policy (Open tracking tab) determines whether Flexmail checks per contact if someone has given consent for open tracking. You can only change the policy while open tracking is turned on. If the policy is active, only contacts with consent receive a tracking pixel.

Click tracking (Click tracking tab) determines whether Flexmail tracks which links in your emails are clicked. This is the default setting for link tracking; you can still adjust it per link or per campaign. Click tracking works independently of open tracking.

UTM tagging (UTM tagging tab) automatically adds UTM parameters to the links in your campaigns, so your analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, shows which email and link brought a visitor to your website. This is the existing setting for Google Analytics link tracking, which is now located on this page. The options and how it works remain unchanged. For a campaign called "Spring sale" and a link called "Shop now", your analytics tool will show source "flexmail", medium "email", campaign "Spring sale", and content "Shop now". If you use your own UTM structure, turn this setting off to prevent conflicts.

Open tracking and click tracking are default values. For open tracking and the consent policy, there are no per-link or per-campaign exceptions: they always apply as soon as they are turned on.

Next to each setting, you will see a brief explanation, a concrete example of what it means for your contacts, and the countries where consent is required.

Saving

Each setting is saved separately. A toggle switch saves as soon as you flip it. When turning off open tracking and when changing the consent policy, you must first confirm your choice in a modal window. After saving, a "Saved" notification appears. If saving fails, the toggle reverts to the last saved value and an error message appears. Your other settings remain unchanged.

The previous screens for click tracking and Google Analytics tracking are no longer available. An old link or bookmark to the click tracking screen redirects you to the Click tracking tab.

What does each combination do?

When should you turn on the consent policy?

The consent policy is currently strongly recommended or even required if you send emails to recipients in France or Italy. We expect other European countries to follow in the future.

Turn on the consent policy if:

• You have contacts in France or Italy
• You want to prepare for future regulations in other countries
• You want to be proactively transparent about how you handle tracking

If you are not sure which rules apply to your situation, consult your legal advisor or DPO.

What changes when you activate the consent policy?

Impact on existing contacts

Contacts without an explicit value start as "Not set" at the moment of activation. If a contact already has an explicit "No", for instance through an earlier import or API call, that value stays as it is.

As long as the policy is active, contacts with "Not set" and contacts with "No" behave identically during sending: no pixel is included.

There is an important difference between the two values. If you turn off the policy later, contacts with "Not set" will receive a tracking pixel again. Contacts with an explicit "No" remain excluded, even without an active policy.

Impact on historical open data

Flexmail stores opens at two levels:

• Individual open events: the record showing that a specific contact opened a specific email at a specific time. You can see these in a contact's activity, and they determine whether a contact matches a segment with "has opened" or goes through a workflow with an open trigger. They are also included in exports.
• Campaign aggregates: totals such as the total number of opens for a campaign. These contain no breakdown per contact.

The policy applies immediately after your confirmation. After that, Flexmail starts the cleanup process: it removes the individual open events of every contact with an explicit "No", across all campaigns sent to date, including automation and drip messages. Once the cleanup is complete, no opens are visible for those contacts in their activity, in segment results, in workflows, or in exports. The campaign totals remain available unchanged and are labelled "Data predates the open tracking consent policy" in your reports.

When activating for the first time, this usually affects no one: existing contacts are set to "Not set", not "No". The deletion only takes effect if an explicit "No" was previously stored, for example via import or API. If you want to delete the individual open events of existing contacts, you can import those contacts with a "No" value.

See How do I collect open tracking consent?.

The same deletion happens every time a contact's value changes to "No" later on, via the profile page, an opt-in form, the API, or an import. Historical data from earlier workflow sends is deleted as well.

Impact on opt-in forms and emails

• Opt-in forms created in Flexmail automatically receive a tracking consent checkbox, on a best-effort basis.
• Emails with the standard Flexmail footer containing the unsubscribe link or profile link receive a "Manage tracking preferences" link. This applies to emails sent while the policy is active and open tracking is turned on.

Impact on reporting, segments, and automations

• Open rates are calculated based on tracked recipients. See How do I read my reports when the consent policy is active?.
• Segments using "has opened" only match contacts with consent. Segments using "has not opened" also match contacts without consent.
• Workflows that start on an open trigger only fire for contacts with consent.

Activating the open tracking consent policy

1. Go to Settings > Tracking and open the Open tracking tab.
2. Make sure open tracking is turned on. If it is turned off, the consent policy is locked.
3. Set the open tracking consent policy to Active.
4. Read through the confirmation modal. It details what changes and what cannot be undone.
5. Type CONFIRM into the text field. The "Activate policy" button only becomes available once you have typed this.
6. Click Activate policy. You can cancel at any point until that final click.

What changes after activation:

• Contacts without consent no longer receive a tracking pixel. Existing contacts start at "Not set" and are only tracked once they give consent.
• Your opt-in forms automatically receive a tracking consent checkbox.
• Every email with the standard Flexmail footer receives a "Manage tracking preferences" link.
• Open rates are calculated based on the tracked segment, not across all recipients.
• Segments and automations based on open behaviour only match contacts with consent.

Deactivating the open tracking consent policy

1. Go to Settings > Tracking and open the Open tracking tab.
2. Set the open tracking consent policy to Inactive.
3. Read through the confirmation modal.
4. Click Deactivate policy.

The modal reminds you that you need the policy to stay compliant if you send to contacts in France or Italy.

What changes after deactivation:

• Contacts with "Not set" receive a tracking pixel again.
• Contacts who explicitly said "No" remain excluded.
• Previously collected consent records are kept. The consent field and the log on the contact record also remain visible.
• The tracking consent checkbox is removed from your opt-in forms, on a best-effort basis. If you reactivate the policy later, the checkbox returns.
• The "Manage tracking preferences" link is no longer added to emails sent after deactivation. The profile page no longer displays a tracking choice.
• Emails that were already sent do not change. Anyone clicking the link in an earlier email sees a brief message explaining that no choice is available right now.
• A campaign that is scheduled or currently sending determines whether to include a pixel per recipient at the moment of sending. If you deactivate the policy halfway through a send, this can change pixel inclusion for the remaining recipients.
• Deleted open data is not restored.

Turning off open tracking

1. Go to Settings > Tracking and open the Open tracking tab.
2. Set open tracking to Off.
3. Confirm the change in the dialogue box.

If you cancel the dialogue, nothing changes and open tracking stays on.

What changes while open tracking is turned off:

• All contacts receive a pixel-free version of your emails, including for emails that are already in recipients' inboxes.
• Your existing open data remains saved. Opens that occur while open tracking is off are not recorded and cannot be retrieved later.
• The consent policy remains visible but is locked, displaying a message that you must enable open tracking to change it. Your configured value is preserved.
• Your account behaves as if the policy is inactive: no checkbox on forms, no link in the footer, and no tracking choice on the profile page.
• The open rate displays "Not available", and you will see a warning in the workflow and segment builder stating that open tracking is turned off.
• The consent field and consent log remain visible on the contact record, and you can still segment on tracking consent.
• You can still write a consent value via the API, an opt-in API call, or an import. This value only affects sending once open tracking is turned back on. A "No" value still deletes that contact's individual open events immediately.

Turning open tracking back on:

• Open tracking resumes immediately for all campaigns sent afterwards. You do not get a confirmation modal for this.
• No open data is backfilled for campaigns sent during the pause.
• The consent policy reverts to the value it had before you turned open tracking off. You do not need to activate it again.
• If the policy was active, the consent rule applies again immediately. Expect your open rates to stay low until more contacts have given consent.

Tracking settings during onboarding

When creating a new account, you complete a required step for tracking settings. You choose your settings for open tracking, click tracking, and the consent policy. There are no preselected values: you make an active choice yourself and you cannot skip this step.

If you turn open tracking off, the choice for the consent policy is disabled and the policy is saved as inactive.

If you choose to set the consent policy to active during onboarding, all consequences listed above apply, except for historical data deletion: a new account has no sending history yet, so there is nothing to delete.

Your choices are active immediately, and you can find them in Settings > Tracking.

Frequently asked questions

Can I turn the consent policy on or off per campaign?

No. The consent policy operates at account level and has no exceptions per campaign. It is always active or always inactive for your entire account.

What happens to contacts who already said "No" if I turn off the policy?

They remain excluded from open tracking. An explicit opt-out is always respected, regardless of the policy setting.

Can I manually adjust a contact's tracking consent status?

No. The field on the contact record is read-only. The value comes either from the recipient directly (via an opt-in form or profile page) or from you via an import or the API. When using an import or API call, you take responsibility for the validity of that consent.

What happens to a contact who unsubscribes?

The consent value does not change upon unsubscribing.

Does the consent policy also apply to transactional email?

No. Transactional email falls outside the consent policy. Open tracking is turned off by default there.

Does consent apply across multiple accounts?

No. Consent applies per account. Consent given by someone in one account does not apply to another account of the same customer, even for the same email address.

I activated the consent policy but my open rates are close to zero. What now?

This is expected. Existing contacts start at "Not set" and are only tracked once they provide consent, either via your opt-in form or the profile page. Consent collected elsewhere can be imported via a file import or the API. See How do I collect open tracking consent?.

Next steps

• How do I collect open tracking consent?: how to collect consent
• How do I read my reports when the consent policy is active?: how open rates, click rates, and CTOR change

Related articles

Background information

• Open tracking consent: what is changing and why?

How-to guides

• How do I collect open tracking consent?
• How do I read my reports when the consent policy is active?