Open and click measurement

An email can tell you two things about the person who received it: that they opened it (an invisible image, the open pixel, loads when the email is displayed) and that they clicked a given link (the link goes through Notifizz first, which notes who followed it). European rules treat both as trackers: measuring an individual’s opens and clicks requires that person’s prior consent. Your organisation collects that consent — the recipients are your customers. Notifizz does not collect it and never guesses it: it applies your instructions to every email it sends. There are two of them: one organisation setting, declared by a person on your team, dated and journaled; and, person by person, the consent or refusal your backend passes on. Three roles meet on this page. Marketing makes the declaration and reads the numbers. Dev passes on each person’s consent, and needs to know what is in the email and what is recorded. Product / Ops answers “why did our open rate drop?”.

TL;DR

One organisation setting, three states: Not declared (the starting point), Only those who consented, All my recipients have consented.
Your backend passes on each person’s consent or refusal with the SDK’s setMeasurementConsent() — once, when it is given or withdrawn, not on every send.
Who is measured in production: under Not declared, nobody; under Only those who consented, the people whose consent you passed on; under All my recipients have consented, everyone except the people who refused.
A refusal always wins. It follows the person — designated by email address or by your user id — across all their records, and it also stops the counting on emails already sent.
Refusing measurement never removes anyone from a send. It changes what is observed, never who receives. Links still take the reader to the right page, and unsubscribe always works.
A member of your team declares, in the dashboard, under Settings → Subscribers & privacy → Opens & clicks. Both Only those who consented and All my recipients have consented are certifications; every answer is appended to a journal, with the version of the wording that was on screen.
Organisations that existed before this setting start as Not declared: nothing is measured until someone declares.
Sandbox testers consent for themselves, on the page that verifies their address — a separate box, unticked by default.
Two separate facts about your numbers: opens are a noisy statistic everywhere; and your measured numbers will be lower, because recipients who did not consent are not counted.
Where nothing was measured, statistics say Not measured, never 0 %; where only some recipients were, the figure is marked partial. Click and Read objectives become partial; objectives on your own business events are unaffected.

The open pixel is unique to each email, so its loading says this person opened this email, at this time. A link that goes through Notifizz says this person clicked this link. European data protection authorities read the ePrivacy rules as covering both — pixels in emails and per-recipient links are named explicitly. Several national regulators, in France and Italy among others, require prior consent to measure them per person, and the French regulator has explicitly ruled out legitimate interest as a basis, B2B email included. The roles follow from who the recipients are:

	Your organisation	Notifizz
Role for your recipients’ data	Controller	Processor
Collects consent to measurement	Yes — in your product, your forms, your contracts	No
Decides what is measured	Yes — through this setting, and the consent it passes on for each person	No
Applies the decision on every email	—	Yes, closed by default

Regulators also expect the sending platform not to emit a measurement request without a consent signal. That is why the default is closed: silence, an abandoned onboarding or a skipped screen all mean no measurement.

Consenting to receive and consenting to be measured are two different things. Whether a person receives a promotional email is governed by categories and subscription preferences. This setting only decides whether the email is measured. A person can receive everything and be measured on nothing.

The three states

State	Who is measured in production	Links reach their destination	Unsubscribe
Not declared	Nobody — not even people whose consent you passed on	Yes	Works
Only those who consented	The people whose consent your backend passed on, unless they refused since	Yes	Works
All my recipients have consented	Everyone, except the people who refused	Yes	Works

For a measured recipient, the email carries the open pixel, and their opens and clicks are recorded. For anyone else, the email carries no pixel and nothing is recorded; everything else about the email is the same.

Not declared is where every organisation starts. Nobody is measured, even a person whose consent your backend has already passed on: measuring needs an active instruction from your organisation first. Refusals passed on in the meantime are kept, and apply from the moment someone declares. The dashboard keeps a notice on every screen until someone decides.
Only those who consented measures exactly the people your backend vouched for, one by one. Until you pass on a first consent, it measures nobody. It is a certification: see the declaration.
All my recipients have consented measures every production recipient individually, except those who refused. It is a certification too, and the broader one.

Whatever the state, your backend can tell Notifizz what a given person decided: they consented to the measurement of their opens and clicks, or they refused it or withdrew it. It is one call to the backend SDK, setMeasurementConsent(), available since version 3.0.0 of the Node, Java and PHP SDKs. The FAQ below shows it.

Once, when it changes. Consent is a lasting property of the person, not of an event: call it when the person gives or withdraws their consent — not on every send, and not as a property of your events.
The person, by address or by user id. You designate them as for identify(): by email address or by your own user id. The signal reaches every record Notifizz holds for that person in the environment of your key — including an address you linked to that user id with identify(), whether the link came before or after the signal. A person Notifizz has never seen is recorded with the signal: a refusal, or a consent passed on for a user id, applies from their very first email.
For the same person, the latest answer replaces the previous one. A consent passed on after a refusal you passed on switches the person back; a refusal the person expressed from an email prevails over any consent you pass on. Passing on the same answer again changes nothing, and the date of the last change is kept.
A refusal always wins. Where records disagree — a refusal passed on for an address, a consent for a user id, and the two never linked — the person is not measured. A refusal also stops the counting on emails that already left.
A consent is never lent. It counts only for the person it was given for: another of your users who shares the same address never borrows it. A consent passed on for an email address counts for a person only if you linked that address to them with identify(), or if they are the only person among your users who holds it. When an address belongs to several people you have not linked together — several of your users, or one of your users and another address you linked it with — a consent passed on for that address changes no existing answer — the one exception to “the latest answer replaces the previous one”. It is only recorded where that address had no answer yet, and then counts at most for the user that address is currently linked to with identify(), while that user has no refusal. Every user keeps their own answer, a refusal included — even one passed on earlier for that same address — and while one of them keeps a refusal, emails sent to that address are not measured. To record a consent for one of them, pass it on under their user id. A refusal passed on for that address reaches all of them.
Detaching undoes what a merge spread. While two identities are linked, a consent passed on for one reaches both. detach() therefore clears every consent on the records of both sides, the detached one included and whatever its origin — nothing records which link brought which consent — and keeps every refusal. Pass the consents on again, under each user id.
Production only. The call acts in the environment of your SDK secret key. Only production emails reach real recipients, so a call made with a non-production key is accepted and has no effect; sandbox testers consent for themselves.
From your backend only. The call needs your environment’s secret key. There is no browser equivalent: a call from a web page could name anyone.
Nothing is asked at send time. Notifizz applies what you passed on. It never calls your systems about consent when an email leaves.

What never changes, whatever the state

Links keep working. In a measured email, every link goes through Notifizz and lands on its destination; in an email that is not measured, links point straight at their destination, so a later change of consent can never record a click on it. Following a link is the service the reader asked for; only recording the click depends on consent.
Unsubscribe is never touched. The unsubscribe link never goes through the link redirect, and works in every state.
Nobody is dropped from a send. Making delivery depend on accepting measurement would make that consent forced — and your transactional email would stop leaving. The decision applies to the pixel and to the recording, never to eligibility. A refusal passed on for a person changes nothing about what they receive.
Everything else is still recorded: what was sent, to whom, when, why, and how it was delivered. The delivery history does not depend on this setting.

Scope

The setting covers email, every category included — transactional too. It applies to emails from your production environment; emails sent outside production only ever reach sandbox testers, who consent for themselves. It is read at the moment of the open or the click, not only when the email left. Moving away from All my recipients have consented, or passing on a person’s refusal, therefore also stops the counting on emails already in your recipients’ inboxes. An email whose personal data has been erased is never measured. At the end of your message retention period, a sent email is redacted: nothing on it says who received it any more, so nothing can check whether that person refused. Its later opens and clicks are not recorded, whatever the state — its links keep working. Notification Center reads and clicks happen inside your own product, through the widget, and are not governed by this setting.

The declaration

Where. In Settings → Subscribers & privacy → Opens & clicks. Until someone answers, nothing is measured, and a notice stays at the top of every dashboard screen — it cannot be dismissed, and it links to that page. The answer can be changed there at any time. Who. Any signed-in member of your organisation. The instruction must come from the controller, so Notifizz staff cannot declare on your behalf, and neither can an AI assistant connected over MCP: the declaration is only made by a person, in the dashboard. What each answer certifies. Both answers are instructions from your organisation as the controller for its recipients, and each one commits it to its own statement. By choosing All my recipients have consented, your organisation certifies that:

every recipient of its production emails gave prior, separate consent to the individual measurement of opens and clicks;
it keeps the proof of that consent;
it passes withdrawals on to Notifizz.

By choosing Only those who consented, your organisation certifies that:

every consent it passes on for a person reflects that person’s prior, separate consent to the individual measurement of opens and clicks;
it passes withdrawals on to Notifizz.

Under the second answer, a person for whom no consent was passed on is not measured. Both statements end the same way: a choice expressed by the recipient always prevails over the declaration. The full wording is shown on screen before you confirm, in your language, and the version you saw is recorded with your answer. Each answer has one wording for every market, written for the strictest reading: a consent given specifically to measurement, distinct from the consent to receive. Withdrawals are passed on person by person, with the same call as consent: the refusal takes that person out of the measurement under every state, emails already sent included. One recipient withdrawing no longer means changing your organisation’s answer.

Declared Only those who consented before that answer had a statement? It used to certify nothing, because nobody could be measured under it. Now that it certifies the consents you pass on, an earlier answer counts as Not declared until a member confirms the statement: the notice comes back, and nobody is measured in the meantime. Confirm it in Settings → Subscribers & privacy → Opens & clicks.

The journal

Every answer is appended, never edited:

Recorded	Example
State before → state after	Not declared → All my recipients have consented
Who	The member who confirmed, by their member ID — shown as you on your own answers
When	Date and time
Where	From Settings — or automatic setup for the first line Notifizz writes
Wording	Version and language of the text shown

The current state is simply the latest entry, and the journal is shown under the setting. It is what you hand over when a regulator or a customer asks when did you start measuring, and on whose instruction? — and it dates any break in your open and click series to the day. The journal holds your organisation’s answers. What your backend passes on for a person is kept with that person — the answer, and the date it last changed — and appears in their right-of-access export. An answer passed on for an email address Notifizz had not yet linked to the person is kept with that address alone, and appears in their export once you link the address to them with identify().

Organisations created before this setting

They start as Not declared. From that day, their production emails carry no open pixel and record no opens or clicks, until someone declares. The first line of their journal is written by Notifizz and marks that date. Nothing else stops: sends, links, unsubscribe, delivery history and objectives on your own business events carry on as before. The dashboard shows a notice until a person has declared.

Sandbox testers

Sandbox testers are the verified test inboxes of your organisation — at most five, shared by all your non-production environments. They receive, for real, the emails sent outside production: campaigns in Review, rehearsals, and Live campaigns fired from a non-production environment. A tester can be anyone you invite, not only a colleague, so your organisation’s declaration does not cover them. Each tester decides for their own inbox:

The page that confirms their address carries a separate box, unticked by default, to accept measurement. Confirming the address without ticking it is fine: they receive the review emails, unmeasured.
Testers verified before this setting existed are not measured until they accept. From the Review sandbox recipients list (Settings → Email → Sender), send them a new link: the page they land on asks for that consent.
Removing a tester from the list ends both: no more review emails, no more measurement.
What your backend passes on does not reach them: a call made with a non-production key has no effect.

The rule is the same as in production: an unmeasured tester’s review email has no open pixel, and their clicks are not recorded. That is expected — it is exactly what the same email will do in production for a recipient who is not measured.

What changes on your numbers

Two separate facts. Keep them apart: they have different causes, and mixing them makes the second one look like something was hidden.

1. Opens are a noisy statistic — everywhere

Apple Mail, with its privacy protection on, loads every image in advance. Corporate security gateways and antivirus software fetch images and follow links before anyone reads the email. An “open” is often a machine. This is true of every email tool, and it has nothing to do with consent. What is reliable and actionable: what was sent to whom, when and why — always recorded — and clicks from the recipients who are measured, which are closer to intent than opens.

2. Your measured numbers will be lower — for a different reason

When measurement follows consent, recipients who did not consent, or who refused, are no longer counted. Open and click rates drop not because people engage less, but because part of your audience is no longer observed. The drop starts on the day the state changes; the journal gives you that date, so a before/after comparison is read with it in mind. Under Only those who consented, the measured share then grows as your backend passes consents on.

”Not measured” is not 0 %

Where a figure depends on this measurement and nothing could be measured — Not declared, or Only those who consented before a first consent is passed on — statistics screens show Not measured instead of a number. A 0 % would claim that nobody opened; Not measured says that nobody was looked at. Sends, deliveries and bounces are always shown.

”Partial”: some recipients measured, not all

Where only some of your production recipients are measured, or Notifizz can no longer vouch that all of them are, statistics screens show the figure followed by partial:

under Only those who consented, from the first consent your backend passes on;
under All my recipients have consented, as soon as your backend passes on an answer for an individual person, or a recipient refuses measurement from an email. A refusal takes someone out of the count. A consent alone takes nobody out, but it shows that your backend answers person by person: the figure is then no longer presented as covering everyone.

A partial figure counts the opens and clicks of measured recipients only, while rates are still computed against every send: they are a floor, not the total.

Objectives

Click and Read objectives read the same signals: on email, they only see measured recipients. Unless every production recipient is measured, the campaign editor flags them as partial. A recipient who is not measured and clicks is not credited — and if the campaign stops its sequence once the objective is reached, that person keeps receiving the follow-ups.
Objectives on your own business events (invoice.paid, migration.completed, …) are unaffected: they come from your track() calls, not from the email. Prefer them whenever the act you want is something your product can see. See objectives.

The recipient’s own choice

A measured email lets its recipient refuse measurement from the email itself, on their preference page, and keep receiving. That refusal prevails over your declaration and over anything your backend passed on, emails already sent included — which is why both statements say so. Unticking it only removes their own refusal.

FAQ

Does “Not declared” stop our emails?

No. Every email still leaves, with working links and a working unsubscribe. Only the open pixel and the link redirect are left out: links point straight at their destination, and opens and clicks are not recorded.

From your backend, with the SDK, once — when the person gives their answer or changes it:

// The person withdrew their consent (preference centre, CRM, support request…)
await client.setMeasurementConsent({
  subject: { type: "AppUserSubject", identifier: "u_42" },
  consented: false,
});

// …or gave it
await client.setMeasurementConsent({
  subject: { type: "EmailSubject", identifier: "alice@example.com" },
  consented: true,
});

Designate the person by your user id or by their email address. consented must be a real boolean: a string such as "false" is refused, and nothing is written. The call is idempotent, and the SDK does not repeat it for you: on a network error or a server error, call it again until it succeeds — a withdrawal that never reaches Notifizz is not honoured. Java and PHP carry the same call — see the Java and PHP references.

Are transactional emails exempt?

Not today. The setting covers every email category, transactional included.

Can our email delivery provider add its own tracking behind this setting?

Not by design. The delivery provider’s own open and click tracking is switched off on every sending server, and Notifizz checks it every hour: if it were ever switched back on, our team is alerted and switches it off. Notifizz’s own pixel and link redirects follow this setting.

Can Notifizz support, or our AI assistant, declare for us?

No. The declaration is your organisation’s instruction as controller, so it is made by a signed-in member of your team, in the dashboard. Notifizz staff are refused, and the setting is not exposed over MCP.

The wording changed while I was reading it. What happens?

The dashboard shows you the new version and asks you to confirm again. An answer is only ever recorded against the exact text that was on screen.

We declared “All my recipients have consented” — why is a tester's review email not measured?

Sandbox testers are outside that declaration: each one accepts measurement for their own inbox, on their verification page. Send them a new link from the Review sandbox recipients list (Settings → Email → Sender).

Our open rate dropped the day we changed the setting. Is something broken?

No. Recipients who are not measured are no longer counted, so the measured rate falls even if nobody behaves differently. Check the date in the journal: the change in your series starts there.

Why not count opens without knowing who opened?

Counting unique opens means knowing which email loaded the pixel — which is precisely measuring an individual. A count that ignores whose email it was can no longer tell one reader opening twice from two readers, and it is inflated by the machines described above.

Privacy friendly

What Notifizz stores, what it doesn’t, and for how long.

Notification preferences

Consent to receive: categories, preference centre, suppression.

Delivery history & stats

The funnel, and what “Not measured” and “partial” mean there.

Objectives & conversions

Why a business event beats a click as an objective.

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Glossary

Open and Click Measurement — Recipient Consent

Open and click measurement

TL;DR

The three states

What never changes, whatever the state

Scope

The declaration

The journal

Organisations created before this setting

Sandbox testers

What changes on your numbers

1. Opens are a noisy statistic — everywhere

2. Your measured numbers will be lower — for a different reason

”Not measured” is not 0 %

”Partial”: some recipients measured, not all

Objectives

The recipient’s own choice

FAQ

See also

Privacy friendly

Notification preferences

Delivery history & stats

Objectives & conversions

​Open and click measurement

​TL;DR

​Why consent is required

​The three states

​Consent person by person

​What never changes, whatever the state

​Scope

​The declaration

​The journal

​Organisations created before this setting

​Sandbox testers

​What changes on your numbers

​1. Opens are a noisy statistic — everywhere

​2. Your measured numbers will be lower — for a different reason

​”Not measured” is not 0 %

​”Partial”: some recipients measured, not all

​Objectives

​The recipient’s own choice

​FAQ

​See also

Privacy friendly

Notification preferences

Delivery history & stats

Objectives & conversions

Open and click measurement

TL;DR

Why consent is required

The three states

Consent person by person

What never changes, whatever the state

Scope

The declaration

The journal

Organisations created before this setting

Sandbox testers

What changes on your numbers

1. Opens are a noisy statistic — everywhere

2. Your measured numbers will be lower — for a different reason

”Not measured” is not 0 %

”Partial”: some recipients measured, not all

Objectives

The recipient’s own choice

FAQ

See also