How to manage open tracking

Estimated 7 minute read

|

Updated Jul 13, 2026, 12:00 AM EST

Table of contents

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.

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 you turn tracking off at the account level or set a recipient to 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.

Klaviyo email tracking settings showing the Track email opens and Track email clicks options, both enabled.

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

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

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.

Channel consent screen showing “Never subscribed” for email and “Unsubscribed” for email open tracking and overall status for an example email address.

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 below.

A recipient’s open tracking status is only visible on their profile once you set it explicitly. Until a recipient is set to Subscribed or Unsubscribed, their profile shows no Email open tracking row at all. With no explicit choice, Klaviyo records opens only if account-level open tracking is on. The absence of a row means no explicit choice has been recorded yet; it does not tell you whether account-level tracking is on or off.

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.

Using a CSV file (list import)

You can set open tracking consent in bulk with a list import, the same way you bulk-remove email marketing consent. Include a column for open tracking consent in your file and set the value to unsubscribed for each recipient you want to stop tracking:

textCopy

Email,Open Tracking Consent
sarah@example.org,UNSUBSCRIBED

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’ Email 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 set the value to UNSUBSCRIBED.

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:

jsonCopy

{
  "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)

To set open tracking consent for new recipients through a flow, you can 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.

Open a recipient’s profile to see their open tracking status. This status is read-only. If you haven’t set explicit consent for that recipient, you won’t see an Email open tracking row on their profile at all. That’s expected: it means Klaviyo hasn’t recorded an explicit choice for them. Their opens are tracked by default only when account-level open tracking is on. Once you set a recipient to Subscribed or Unsubscribed, using any of the methods above, an Email open tracking row appears on their profile with that status.

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.

Every change to a recipient’s open tracking consent, whether made through a list import, sync, or the API, 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.

Was this article helpful?

YesNo

Use this form only for article feedback. Learn how to contact support.

Explore more from Klaviyo

Community

Connect with peers, partners, and Klaviyo experts to find inspiration, share insights, and get answers to all of your questions.

Visit Community

Partners

Hire a Klaviyo-certified expert to help you with a specific task, or for ongoing marketing management.

Hire a partner

Support

Access support through your account.

Email support (free trial and paid accounts) Available 24/7

Chat/virtual assistance Availability varies by location and plan type

Log in