Tracking pixels: 30% of emails have gone dark on opens

Five months after the CNIL's tracking pixel recommendations, and the compliance sprint that followed, one question keeps coming up: what happened to your open KPIs? We dug into a panel of Batch customers to find out, industry by industry. Here's what we found.

• Nearly 30% of emails sent in August and September no longer report opens. Only 70.9% still carry a tracking pixel, down from 100% in March to May.

• Open rates on pixel-tracked emails haven't moved. Senders that still track opens posted 34.0% in both periods on a like-for-like basis (33.1% then 34.0% across the full panel).

• What drives the gap is each sender's policy, not their industry. In every industry, 13% to 25% of senders have switched off open tracking. Across the panel, that's 18% of senders and 20% of all emails sent over the period.

About the panel: Batch customers that sent at least 10,000 emails in each period, around 1.1 billion emails in total. Sender shares are normalized to a base of 100 for readability: the proportions are unchanged and nothing is extrapolated to the wider market. We compared March to May with August and September 2026. The panel doesn't represent the whole market, so treat it as a benchmark. This article follows our compliance guide and our post-deadline review.

Why your open rate looks like it dropped

Measured across every email sent, pixel or not, the open rate fell from 33.1% to 24.1%. Measured only on emails with a pixel, it rose from 33.1% to 34.0%.

So the drop is mostly opens that are no longer counted. An email without a pixel can't report an open, even when someone reads it. What needs to change is how you calculate your open rate. Batch already does this by only counting emails that contain a pixel.

Who still tracks opens

20% of emails sent over the period now come from senders that have switched off open tracking.

In our panel, 18% of senders have stopped tracking opens altogether, and 42% only track recipients who have opted in.

Senders that switched tracking off gave us three reasons:

• The European framework feels too vague. For a business operating across the EU, the picture is complex. So far, only France (CNIL) and Italy (Garante) have clarified their positions, and the two don't line up on every point.

• They're playing it safe until they can free up the resources to get compliant.

• They've moved on from opens to clicks and other business metrics. Opens were already becoming less reliable, and keeping them now comes with extra compliance work.

That leaves the third group: senders that still add a pixel to 100% of their emails. They make up 39% of senders but only 21% of emails. These tend to be lower-volume senders, senders whose main audience doesn't appear to be in France, or senders still working toward compliance.

Recipients: fewer and fewer profiles can be tracked

The share of profiles receiving at least one pixel-tracked email in a given month dropped from 99.9% in June to 65.9% in September.

Why consent is eroding: two hypotheses

The causes vary from one sender to the next, but two hypotheses stand out:

• Contacts collected before April were treated as opted in to pixels during the transition period, which ran until July 14. Some of them may now be withdrawing consent.

• New profiles are now asked for consent, and many probably don't give it.

Senders that switched pixels off entirely also contribute to this decline, though that doesn't rule out either hypothesis.

Sender policy matters more than industry

In every industry, 13% to 25% of senders have switched off open tracking.

Among senders that still track opens, pixel-only open rates show no across-the-board drop in engagement. Retail is stable (30.4% to 29.6%), Media is up (36.1% to 37.2%) and Services is stable (33.0% to 33.2%). Mobility (38.4% to 36.4%) and Leisure & Hospitality (41.3% to 38.3%) are down.

Key takeaways

1. Around 30% of emails no longer report opens. Any segment, retargeting flow or performance report built on opens now only sees the other 70%.

2. Sender policy matters more than industry. In every industry, 13% to 25% of senders have switched off tracking.

3. Open rates on pixel-tracked emails are stable. On a like-for-like basis, they held at 34.0% in both periods. Always read them alongside the share of emails carrying a pixel.

The bottom line: it's time to stop building your entire CRM strategy around opens, whether for retargeting, inactive suppression or segmentation. Lean on signals that don't depend on a pixel, like clicks and conversions, and always read your open rate alongside the share of emails carrying a pixel.

Our teams can help you rethink your CRM strategy. We may come back to these numbers in a few months to see whether the share of pixel-tracked emails keeps falling.