This is a brief memo in response to updated European legislation requiring consent before sending emails containing open pixels.

In this context, Unify acts as the sending platform, not the advertiser. Businesses sending emails through Unify retain control over recipient consent, list sourcing, and targeting. We cannot certify compliance. Instead, we advise on sending mechanics, configuration, and proactively flag risk factors.

Unify’s Managed Deliverability offering optimizes for inbox placement (emails being viewed in the recipient’s primary mailbox), while additional configuration may be required to remain compliant sending to recipients in different geographies.

Open Tracking

First, consider whether tracking open rates is critical to the success of your outbound program - while Unify provides tools to help assess open rates (including automated vs human opens) it is a proxy metric for campaign success at best - actual replies continue to be a better metric of campaign success.

Further, including open pixels in emails will result in worsened deliverability (placement into primary mailboxes) and more frequent spam flagging by ESPs that detect the pixel and mark it as suspicious to the recipient.

Open tracking itself is not a gold-standard metric in email deliverability. We have superior tools fit for purpose:

• For Diagnostics, we can run inbox placement tests (providing a breakdown by email server provider, by region)

• For Performance, reply rates continue to be a more important leading indicator of revenue.

Should you wish to continue tracking open rates, our general recommendation is to follow Klayvio’s guidance for recording recipient-level opt-in status to marketing emails from your business.

We recommend recording open pixel opt-ins as a contact-level CRM field to use as a filter in outbound motions. A conservative approach includes updating your footer messaging to disclose the use of an open pixel.

Country-level Guidance

The following buckets describe the degree of configuration that we believe is required to send B2B sales emails within the following geographies:

🟢 Low - automated sequencing (US, UK)

• Sequences can be sent as usual. The constraint here is landing in the primary inbox (deliverability), not legislation.

• UK: UK GDPR still governs named individuals (requiring businesses to have a data retention policy). Since the "right to object" is absolute, a conservative posture would treat individual unsubscribes should be treated as opt-outs across sequences rather than an unsubscribe from an individual sequence.

• Similar countries: Ireland, Netherlands

🟡 Moderate - conditional outreach (France, Canada)

• France: sending for legitimate interest works for B2B where the message relates to the recipient's job. Open tracking pixel inclusion needs to be declared and requires prior consent - a separate opt-in for the pixel itself is recommended. An additional tip: if French-language outreach is deemed a priority, consider using language-specific sequences with a contact-level filter for geographic region.

• Canada: Automation is fine only to contacts with a recorded basis of interest (express or implied). The sender carries the burden of proof for a recorded basis of “conspicuous publication”. For adequate data hygiene, consider maintaining a per-contact log of that express or implied consent, the data source, and the timestamp. A more conservative posture would treat Canada as a consent-first market as described in the “red” tier below.

• Similar countries: Australia, Singapore

🔴 High - very limited automated sending (Germany, Israel)

• Germany: express prior opt-in is required, with no exception for B2B outreach. LinkedIn DMs are also governed by this as well (OLG Hamm, 2023) which makes the consent requirement enforceable across multiple outreach channels.

• Israel: prior written consent is required before sending outreach. One permission-seeking message to a business recipient is permitted; a sequence is not (this is expanded upon in a recommendation below).

• Guidance is to use a marketing strategy spanning (inbound, content, events, trials) that captures opt-in to both further outreach and consent to include open pixels before following up with additional messaging.

• Similar: Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain

Unify Platform Configurations

To increase the likelihood of remaining compliant across regions, the following measures can be implemented within the Unify platform.

Gate sending to specific regions through Exclusions

• Build an jurisdiction-focused Exclusion (Settings → Exclusions) for restricted-market contacts (Germany, Israel, even France). Exclusions are dynamic filters that apply organization-wide, using CRM fields or custom objects.

• Company-level exclusions cascade to associated people. Best practice would be to apply the filtering at the contact level to avoid filtering out entire companies based on their corporate HQ location.

• Configuring market-level exclusions help your reps import lists with these rulesets available, improving consistency across rep campaigns.

Store the consent status where it can gate a Play

• Push consent basis, source, and timestamp into a custom object or CRM field. Then filter Plays and audiences on it.

• This helps enable outbound to countries with stricter consent requirements (Canada, France, Germany). Note: this does imply the use of an opt-in strategy more broadly, including consent capture and CRM hygiene to maintain.

Use opt-out (not unenroll) for objections

• Unenrolling stops one sequence. Opting out blocks all future enrolment and auto-unenrolls from active sequences.

• For UK and EU objections, opt-out is the correct action to take given that the right to object is permanent in some jurisdictions, not per-campaign.

• Track opt-out status at the contact level and enforce that across all sequences and plays.

Build EMA sending schedules

• When running campaigns within EMEA, create a Ruleset that will allow for sending during local working hours rather than North American hours.

• A set send window of 9am - 4pm CET provides ample coverage across EMEA. At the extreme, this could involve a custom send schedule per market with local time zone, local holidays, and excluded dates (but not necessary).

General (catch-all) email addresses

• By default, generic addresses (info@) are off by default in recipient eligibility. These addresses are often unmonitored and frequently serve as spam traps - filtering out these addresses is a deliverability-focused posture.

• However, in countries such as France, generic company addresses sit outside of personal-data rules and are legally safer to send to. Including catch-alls will likely result in worse engagement and campaign performance, but offers upside of additional campaign recipients that come with comparatively lower legal risk to contact.

Conclusions

1. Determine when open rate is a core business metric to continue tracking - if it is not, remove tracking pixels and reduce complexity entirely.

2. Maintain a canonical CRM object storing an individual’s opt-in status to commercial emails from your business.

3. Use marketing initiatives to build your lists of opted-in individuals who have agreed to receive further emails.

4. Consider avoiding outreach in specific countries altogether given the stringency of the email-related legislation.