How to manage open tracking

Klaviyo can stop recording email open events, either across your whole account or for individual recipients. Some regulators in the EU, including France’s data protection authority (CNIL) and Italy’s data protection authority (the Garante), now require prior consent for using tracking pixels, tiny invisible images loaded when an email is displayed, for most marketing purposes, and these controls give you a way to honor that.

This article explains what open tracking is, what turning it off does, and how to manage it at both the account and recipient level, including how recipients can give or withdraw consent themselves.

What open tracking is

Klaviyo records an email open using a small tracking pixel, an invisible image included in the messages you send. When a recipient opens your email, their email client loads the pixel from Klaviyo, and Klaviyo records an “Opened Email” event on that recipient's profile. Those open events feed reporting, attribution, segmentation, and flow triggers.

When you turn off open tracking, the pixel still loads, but Klaviyo does not record the open. Turning off open tracking does not remove the pixel from your messages.

Open tracking controls apply to email opens only. Turning open tracking off does not affect click tracking or any other channel. Opens and clicks are controlled separately, so if you want to stop recording both, you also need to turn off click tracking. See How to manage click tracking for those steps.

Before you begin

• You decide who is in scope. You are responsible for determining which recipients require consent and for setting these controls accordingly. Klaviyo does not decide this for you. If you mail recipients in France or Italy, those recipients are a common starting point.
• Open tracking is on by default. Klaviyo records opens unless tracking is off at the account level or a recipient is unsubscribed from open tracking.
• Changes affect new opens, including opens on emails already sent. Once your account setting is saved or a recipient's consent change has finished processing, Klaviyo uses the updated setting for new opens, including opens on emails already sitting in a recipient's inbox. Opens that were already recorded stay in place. Turning tracking back on allows new opens to be recorded again, subject to both the account setting and the recipient's consent.
• Open tracking consent is separate from email marketing consent. Changing a recipient's open tracking consent never changes whether they are subscribed to your email marketing.

What turning off open tracking affects

When open tracking is off for a recipient, Klaviyo does not record new open data for them. This affects:

• Open rate, and other reporting built from opens, including the opens shown in recipient activity and audience or segment breakdowns, and the percentage of opens by inbox provider. Recipients who still receive your emails but aren’t tracked won’t register opens, so these numbers reflect fewer people than actually opened.
• Click to open rate, which uses recorded opens as its denominator. Turning off open tracking makes this rate less representative of recipient engagement even if click tracking stays on.
• Conversions and revenue attributed to an open. If a conversion’s only qualifying touchpoint in your attribution window was an open, and that open wasn’t recorded, Klaviyo will attribute the conversion to another touchpoint if one exists (like a click), or the conversion won’t be attributed to that message at all. Your attribution model settings aren’t changed by open tracking consent, only the open data feeding into them. See How to change your attribution model to review which interactions count toward attribution for your account.
• Segmentation based on open activity.
• Flow triggers that rely on open events.

Metrics based on other activity, including click rate, delivery rate, bounce rate, spam complaint rate, unsubscribe rate, and conversions or revenue attributed to a click or another non-open touchpoint, are not affected.

Turn off open tracking for your entire account

This is the simplest way to stop recording opens. It applies to every email your account sends. You need permission to edit account settings to change this setting.

1. Click your account name in the lower left, then click Settings.
2. Go to Email > Tracking.
3. Uncheck Track email opens.
4. Save your changes.

When Track email opens is off, Klaviyo stops recording opens for all of your account's email messages.

Manage open tracking consent for individual recipients

If you only need to stop recording opens for some recipients, you can manage open tracking consent per recipient instead of turning it off for the whole account. You can set it yourself, or let recipients give or withdraw it.

Your account setting takes priority. If Track email opens is off for your account, Klaviyo does not record opens for any recipient, even if they are subscribed to open tracking.

Open tracking consent is stored per recipient and per email address, so a profile with more than one email address needs consent set for each email you want to stop tracking. When account-level open tracking is on, a recipient can be:

• Subscribed: opens are recorded.
• Unsubscribed: opens are not recorded.
• Never Subscribed: no explicit consent has been set. Opens are recorded.

Because open tracking is on by default, you only need to act on the recipients you want to stop tracking. Set those recipients to unsubscribed from open tracking using any of the methods in Step 2. To let recipients give or withdraw consent themselves, see Step 3.

Step 1: Identify the recipients in scope

Decide which recipients you need to stop recording opens for. If you are responding to the CNIL or Garante requirements, you might start with recipients in France or Italy. You can use profile data such as location to help build this audience.

Step 2: Set open tracking consent to unsubscribed

Using a CSV file (list import)

You can set open tracking consent in bulk with a list import. Include a column for open tracking consent and use unsubscribe to stop recording opens, or subscribe to resume recording opens when account-level open tracking is on. Use these import values rather than copying the status label shown on a profile. The value never_subscribed leaves the recipient's existing open tracking consent unchanged; it does not revoke consent or reset an existing choice. For example:

Email,Open Tracking Consent
sarah@example.org,unsubscribe
alex@example.org,subscribe

Before importing, check whether any flows are triggered by the list you plan to use. Set those flows to manual if you do not want imported contacts to receive their messages. To import:

1. Go to Audience > Lists & segments and select the list you want to use, or create a new one.
2. Open the Manage list dropdown and click Import contacts.
3. Click Upload and select your CSV file.
4. Map your email address column to Email and your open tracking consent column to Open Tracking Consent, then click Next.
5. Select Only import the consent in my file to leave marketing consent unchanged, then click Import.

Wait for the import to finish, then check the recipients’ open tracking status on their profiles. If you need tracking off before sending, confirm they show Unsubscribed before sending to them.

Setting open tracking consent does not change a recipient's email marketing consent. As with any list import, the contacts in your file are added to the list you import into. For more on the import flow, see How to import subscribers to a list.

Using SFTP or a data warehouse sync

The same Open Tracking Consent column works for SFTP imports and data warehouse syncs. Map the column to open tracking consent and use unsubscribe to stop recording opens, or subscribe to resume recording opens when account-level open tracking is on. As with CSV imports, never_subscribed leaves existing consent unchanged. These are import values; the API uses the separate consent values shown below.

Using the API

You can set open tracking consent with the Subscribe and Unsubscribe Profiles bulk endpoints. Open tracking consent is a separate object under subscriptions.email, alongside marketing consent, and changing it does not affect marketing consent.

To stop recording opens for a recipient, unsubscribe them from open tracking with POST /api/profile-subscription-bulk-delete-jobs:

{
  "data": {
    "type": "profile-subscription-bulk-delete-job",
    "attributes": {
      "profiles": {
        "data": [
          {
            "type": "profile",
            "attributes": {
              "email": "sarah@example.com",
              "subscriptions": { "email": { "open_tracking": { "consent": "UNSUBSCRIBED" } } }
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

To start recording opens again, subscribe them to open tracking with POST /api/profile-subscription-bulk-create-jobs and a consent value of SUBSCRIBED.

Setting consent for new recipients (advanced)

If new subscribers sign up through a Klaviyo sign-up form that includes a Tracking consent block, the block records their choice when they sign up (see Step 3). For recipients who join another way, such as through an integration, you can set open tracking consent through a flow: add a webhook action that calls the API. Place the webhook before any send action and trigger the flow as early as possible.

The bulk consent API processes requests asynchronously. A successful webhook response does not confirm that consent has finished updating, so placing the webhook first does not guarantee that no opens will be recorded. If tracking must be off before an email is sent, confirm the recipient’s open tracking status is Unsubscribed before sending, or turn off account-level open tracking until the recipient updates are complete.

Step 3: Let recipients give or withdraw consent

Recipients can give or withdraw open tracking consent themselves through a Tracking consent block, in a sign-up form or on your preference page. Their choices are saved to their profile the same way as consent you set using the methods above.

• In a sign-up form: new subscribers choose whether to give consent when they sign up. See Understanding form blocks and fields.
• On your preference page: recipients can give or withdraw consent whenever they update their preferences. See How to let recipients manage email tracking consent on your preference page.

With both blocks, a recipient who leaves the open tracking box unchecked, or leaves No selected on the preference page, is set to unsubscribed from open tracking when they submit. This includes recipients whose opens Klaviyo was recording by default.

Show the blocks only to the recipients you want to ask. For sign-up forms, use location targeting to show the form only where you collect consent. On your preference page, use the block’s location settings, which go by the recipient’s IP address when they open the page, not their profile location.

The preference page block also asks about click tracking until you change it. To ask only about opens, select only Email opens in the block’s settings.

Check a recipient's open tracking consent

Open a recipient’s profile, then on the Details tab, expand their email address in the channel list. Under Tracking consent, Open tracking shows Subscribed or Unsubscribed, along with the method and date of the most recent change. If no explicit choice has been recorded for that recipient, Open tracking isn’t listed. That’s expected, and it means their opens are tracked by default when account-level open tracking is on. Once a recipient is set to Subscribed or Unsubscribed, by you using any of the methods above or by the recipient through a sign-up form or your preference page, Open tracking appears with that status. This status is read-only. To change it, use any of the methods above. Recipients can also update it through a sign-up form or your preference page.

You can also retrieve open tracking consent through the Get Profiles API. Include additional-fields[profile]=subscriptions in the request, then check subscriptions.email.open_tracking in the response.

Track consent changes over time

Every change to a recipient’s open tracking consent, whether made through a list import, sync, the API, a sign-up form, or your preference page, is recorded as a timestamped event on their profile, the same way other consent changes are.

Use the Events API to retrieve this history:

• Filter by profile_id and the consent metric IDs below to see one recipient’s open tracking consent history.
• Filter by metric_id to see open tracking consent changes across your account. Consent grants and revocations are separate metrics, Consented to Open Tracking and Revoked Open Tracking Consent, so retrieve events for both to see opt-ins and opt-outs.

Follow the API’s pagination links to retrieve all matching events.

This is the recommended way to produce a record of consent changes, for example, if you need to demonstrate compliance in response to a data protection inquiry.

Related articles

• How to manage click tracking
• How to let recipients manage email tracking consent on your preference page
• How to change your attribution model
• Understanding unique vs. total opens and clicks
• Understanding consent in profiles
• How to comply with data privacy laws
• Email tracking pixel regulations (CNIL, Garante, and beyond): Managing your open tracking settings