In Sarbacane, the decrease in your open and click rates is explained by compliance with CNIL requirements applicable from July 2026. Only contacts who have given their explicit consent to the tracking pixel are now counted in your statistics, without any change in your audience's actual engagement.
Have access to the "Campaigns" module in Sarbacane.
Until now, your open and click statistics in Sarbacane included a statistical adjustment mechanism to compensate for the technical limitations of pixel tracking (such as image blocking or email filters).
To comply with CNIL regulatory requirements applicable from July 2026, this operation is changing: email tracking now relies solely on the explicit consent of the recipient. Only contacts who have accepted the tracking pixel are included in your reports.
Note: you can consult this explanation directly in the Sarbacane interface, in the form of a tooltip, at the level of the "active" and "openers" indicators.
The CNIL treats tracking pixels (spy pixels) embedded in emails as web trackers (in the same way as cookies). Their placement and reading therefore require the prior and explicit consent of each recipient. This change brings Sarbacane's measurement tools into direct compliance with the regulatory framework.
Volume of measurable data: the size of your contact database that has consented to the tracking pixel directly determines the volume of statistics measured. The higher the number of consenting contacts, the more complete your visibility on opens and clicks.
Actual engagement level: the displayed decrease in your rates reflects only a restriction of the measurement scope to consenting users only. The actual interest and engagement of your audience remain unchanged.
To maintain an accurate assessment of your performance on Sarbacane:
Raise awareness among your recipients: explain the benefit of accepting the tracking pixel when collecting their consent.
Diversify your metrics: rely in a complementary way on other metrics (clicks, conversions, direct responses) to evaluate the overall performance of your sends.
Best practice: do not directly compare open rates recorded before and after implementing pixel consent, as the calculation scope is no longer identical.
