Over the summer, we explained that regulators in France and Italy now expect you to get consent before tracking whether someone opened your email. There were some workarounds that allowed you to continue sending: you split your list by country, then sent the same campaign twice: once with tracking on, and once with it off for your French and Italian contacts.
As soon as the news reached our desks, we knew Transpond needed some changes to make the whole process easier, whilst keeping our customers’ organizations safe from potential penalties. So here it is.
You can now switch off open tracking for individual contacts instead. Once a contact is marked, every campaign you send leaves the tracking pixel out of their email, and everyone else on the list is tracked as usual. So you're back to one list and one send.
What's new in Transpond
Every contact record now has a Disable open tracking switch. When it's on, that person's opens aren't tracked. Their opens won't count toward your campaign stats, and they won't trigger any automations that rely on opens.
Open tracking stays on by default, so nothing changes for a contact until you change it.
Three ways to switch off open tracking
On a single contact
Open the contact's record and look for the Disable open tracking switch in the bottom left. Flick it on, and you're done.
For a whole segment at once
If you have a segment of French or Italian contacts (perhaps left over from the old two-send workaround), you can switch them all over together:
- Go to Contacts and choose your segment from the Segment dropdown.
- Tick the Select all checkbox, then click Change Status and select Open Tracking Disabled.
- Confirm with the Change Status button.
Don't have a segment yet? You can create one under Contacts > Segments > Add Segment. If you ever need to switch tracking back on, the same bulk action has an option to re-enable it.
One thing to bear in mind: this updates the contacts who are in the segment at the time. Anyone who joins it later will need switching over too, so it's worth checking in every so often, and definitely before a big send. Set this up when you've got a quiet half hour, not five minutes before a campaign is due out. It's easy once it's done, but much less relaxing against the clock.
For a single send
If you'd rather not change anyone's tracking status for good, you can still switch tracking off for one campaign. In Step 1 of creating your campaign, enable Show Advanced options, then untick Track opens and/or Track link clicks.
What about click tracking?
The per-contact setting covers open tracking only. Since our July post, France's regulator has clarified its position on clicks. Tracked links aren't directly covered by its guidance on pixels, but the CNIL says they still count as trackers under French law, so whether you need consent depends on what you use the click data for. If you use clicks to measure how your campaigns perform, the safest approach is to treat them the same way as opens.
Until per-contact click tracking arrives, that means unticking Track link clicks in the campaign's advanced options for any send that includes those contacts. We'll let you know as soon as it's available.
What's coming next
Switching off open tracking contact by contact is one part of our work on consent. We're continuing to look for ways to make consent simpler to manage in Transpond, so that keeping up with rules like these doesn't eat into your week. We'll share updates in our newsletter as they happen.
With Italy's compliance deadline on October 28, 2026, now's a good time to get your contacts sorted.
For a full walkthrough, check out our support guide to restricting open tracking.
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This article is for general information and isn't legal advice. If you're unsure how these rules apply to your business, please speak to a legal professional.