This article is for general informational purposes and isn’t legal advice. As the sender, you remain responsible for your own compliance. We advise you to work with your legal or privacy team to confirm how these requirements apply to your marketing communications.

If you send marketing emails to contacts in France or Italy, the rules on tracking pixels have changed. According to regulators CNIL (in France) and Garante (in Italy), the tracking pixel behind your email open rate now needs its own consent. This tracking consent is separate to the opt-in consent your audience gave to receive emails initially.

We’ve collated information on what each regulator is asking for, go-live timings, and how the Dotdigital platform supports these changes – to help you stay ahead.

TLDR

You can no longer combine email tracking consent with your general marketing consent. You need to provide an easy way for people to opt-out of email tracking, and be able to switch this tracking pixel off for those contacts in France and Italy who choose to opt-out. 

So, what’s actually changing…

First, the basics. A tracking pixel is a tiny, invisible image that loads when someone opens your email. It’s how open rates get measured, and it’s been sitting quietly in the background of email marketing for years. The CNIL and the Garante now treat it the same way they treat a cookie: as something that can be used to identify a person, which requires their permission.

Consent to send a marketing email and consent to track if the email has been opened are now two separate considerations that need to be treated differently. Contacts also need an easy way to opt-out of open rate tracking without unsubscribing from your emails altogether.

Both regulators use the same underlying structure, but the go-live dates differ by country. Your contacts fall into one of three groups, with each group requiring a slightly different course of action.

1. Existing contacts, collected before the new consent requirements were published. This group falls within a transition period, so tracking can continue for now, but contacts need to be notified of the changes and given a way to opt-out by a set deadline
2. Contacts collected during the gap between the new consent requirements being published and the compliance deadline. There is no transition period for this group. You need to provide an affirmative opt-in before you can track the email opens for this segment, with tracking staying off until consent is received
3. New contacts, collected after the compliance deadline: consent needs to be captured at sign-up, before any tracked email goes out

Here’s how those three groups map to publication dates in each country. 

France: the CNIL’s timeline

The CNIL’s recommendation took effect in stages between April and July 2026, and the last of those dates, 14 July, has already passed. In practice, that now leaves two groups:

• Contacts you notified and gave a chance to opt-out before 14 July 2026, who didn’t object: you can keep tracking their opens

• Everyone else, meaning contacts who weren’t notified before July 14th, contacts you collected after 14 April 2026, or anyone new: turn off open rate tracking for this group until they opt-in

If you haven’t already removed tracking pixels on email open rates, you are now required to take that step for contacts in France (the rule came into force on July 14th 2026).

Italy: the Garante’s timeline

The Garante published its own guidelines (Provvedimento n. 284) in April 2026, with a six-month runway. Contacts within this region are grouped as follows:

• Contacts collected before April 29th 2026: Transition group
  You can keep the open rate tracking pixel on for now, but notify them and give them a way to opt-out of tracking (separate from unsubscribing entirely) by 28 October 2026

• Contacts collected from April 29th 2026 and onwards: No transition
  This applies immediately, not just after 28 October. Turn off tracking for these contacts until you’ve got their affirmative opt-in

• Contacts collected from October 28th 2026 onward: New sign-ups
  Consent needs to be captured at sign-up, before any tracked email is sent

What we’ve changed in Dotdigital

The Dotdigital Marketing platform has been updated to help you meet these new requirements. 

• You can now turn on a setting that allows contacts to opt-out of tracking, via a link in your campaigns

• Open rate tracking consent can be updated in bulk for each audience segment, so once you’ve identified your France and/or Italy contacts, you can opt them all out with one action

• Every consent change is logged against the contact, providing a record of what changed and when

This broadly covers off the requirements set by CNIL and the Garante, tracking consent that’s kept separate from marketing consent, and an easy way to manage it. Whether that’s a contact setting their own preference, or a marketing team updating entire segments at once.

However, you will still need to check the compliance of your own marketing programs with your legal and/or privacy teams to check the individual considerations for your organization.

What to do now

1. Read our help centre article on managing open tracking consent. It gives step-by-step guidance on activating the new settings, adding the opt-out link, and updating consent in bulk
2. Talk to your privacy team about which of your contacts are in scope, and how you will inform your audience of any necessary changes
3. Build a segment of the contacts that require permission updates (such as contacts based in France and Italy) and update their open tracking consent in bulk
4. Add the open tracking opt-out link to your campaign footers, next to your unsubscribe link

If you have any questions about the new guidance (we know, it’s a tricky one), reach out to us through Live Chat within the platform, or on the Dotdigital website, or talk to your Account Manager.  We’re happy to help you work through it.

G2’s Summer 2026 rankings are out, and Dotdigital landed Leader status in 13 product categories. Getting recognized in one category is an achievement. Getting recognized in 13 shows how broad the platform is and how differently marketers use it in their day-to-day.

What does a G2 Leader status mean?

G2’s rankings are based entirely on real customer reviews. Every single one gets verified by G2, so you know it’s from a real Dotdigital user, and not just what a vendor says about itself.

Two things drive the G2 rankings: 

1. Customer satisfaction scores drawn from reviews
2. Market presence, which factors in review volume, reach, and engagement

G2 plots every vendor on a grid using those two scores. Leaders sit in the top right, which means they score high on both. You can’t buy your way in or coast on brand recognition alone. Here’s how that looks for categories like marketing automation:

Which categories does Dotdigital rank as a G2 Leader?

G2 reviewers choose categories based on how they use the platform every day. These 13 categories cover the full customer engagement lifecycle, from acquisition and messaging through to data, personalization, and analytics.

1. Email marketing
2. Marketing automation
3. Personalization
4. Customer data platform (CDP)
5. Email deliverability
6. Communication platform as a service (CPaaS)
7. SMS marketing
8. Mobile marketing
9. Customer journey analytics
10. Email template builder
11. Landing page builders
12. Personalization engines
13. Transactional email

Why Dotdigital is a leader across 13 categories

More than 1,200 customers have left Dotdigital reviews on G2, averaging 4.4/5. Across those reviews, four themes keep coming up:

• Smart automation that saves time
• Accessible segmentation
• Connected cross-channel marketing
• Support from real people

Smart automation that saves time

Reviewers keep mentioning how much manual work the platform takes off their plate. You can map out multi-step journeys with triggers, timing rules, and decision points, so cart recovery emails, post-purchase flows, and win-back campaigns run themselves.

It’s how Scott, a Communications Partner, keeps ongoing communications running on their own, with journeys built on triggers, timing rules, and decision points.

Accessible segmentation

You don’t need a data team or a single line of code to build precise segments. Slice your audience by purchase behavior, engagement, demographics, or custom data fields in a few clicks. And with Segment Agent, you can now describe the audience you need in your own words and let AI build it.

It’s what Alo, a Digital Marketing Specialist, uses to build precise segments in a few clicks, with no code needed.

Connected cross-channel marketing

Email, SMS, WhatsApp, mobile push, web, and ads all run from one platform, with over 200 integrations feeding in your customer and order data. That’s why reviewers talk about managing everything in one place instead of juggling tools.

Brian, a VP of Digital, has run cross-channel marketing this way for years, backed by the platform’s AI and hands-on support teams.

Support from real people

Help is on hand around the clock, with 24/7 live chat, dedicated onboarding, and your own customer success manager. It’s the theme reviewers get most enthusiastic about, and the one that’s hardest for any platform to fake.

Ben’s seen all of it, seven years and two organizations’ worth, from onboarding through to building full customer journeys.

Dotdigital named one of the best customer data platforms by G2

Our G2 recognition goes further than Leader status. G2 included Dotdigital in its roundup of the 9 best customer data platforms, alongside other platforms like Salesforce, Bloomreach, and Klaviyo.

G2 highlighted Dotdigital as best for accessible marketing automation, calling out our email, SMS, and lifecycle campaign automation as standout strengths. The list was built on real user reviews, with platforms selected based on customer data unification, segmentation, activation, analytics, usability, and integrations.

In G2’s words, Dotdigital is a strong fit for mid-market teams who want their marketers to manage automation without leaning on technical specialists for every campaign. That sits nicely alongside our 13 G2 Leader categories and reflects how customers are using Dotdigital to bring their data and marketing activity together in one place.

Read the full G2 list of the best customer data platforms.

How to use G2 when you’re choosing a marketing platform

Evaluating marketing platforms isn’t easy. There’s a lot to weigh up, and it doesn’t help that many vendors will tell you what you want to hear. Independent platforms, like G2, give you real, verified customer insights from people who use the platform every day.

Here’s how to get the most out of it during your research:

Count the Leader categories

Every G2 category is a separate contest with its own reviews and rankings. A vendor can be brilliant at email, and average at everything else, and the category view shows you that. So instead of asking “Is this platform good?” check whether it leads in the specific categories your team uses or needs. If you need email, SMS, and automation, look for Leader status in all three rather than a single overall badge.

Look past the star rating

Two platforms can both sit at 4.4 stars for completely different reasons. The detail is in G2’s satisfaction scores, where reviewers rate things like ease of use, ease of setup, and quality of support as separate questions. Decide which of those matters most to your team before you compare.

Check how recent the reviews are

Marketing platforms change fast. A vendor coasting on praise from three years ago may be a different product now. Filter reviews to the last 6 to 12 months and see whether the same strengths keep coming up. Consistent recent praise for the same things is a much stronger signal than a high all-time average.

Compare vendors within the same category

It’s hard to compare platforms from their own websites because everyone describes themselves differently. G2’s category grid fixes that by scoring direct competitors on the same criteria and plotting them side by side. Pick the category that matches your use case, shortlist from the grid, then read reviews for each vendor on your list.

Look at who’s leaving the reviews

A review from a 5,000-person enterprise tells you little if you’re a team of four, and the reverse is true, too. G2 shows reviewer job titles and company sizes, so filter for companies that look like yours. Their experience of onboarding, support, and day-to-day use is the closest preview you’ll get of your own.

If you’re a Dotdigital customer and haven’t left a review yet, it genuinely makes a difference.

Head to our G2 profile and share your experience. It takes less time than you’d think.

Now, we’re navigating a new kind of hybrid. One that isn’t about where people work, but what they work with. Today’s marketing teams are made up of humans and their AI counterparts. The question of how to manage that handoff is the defining challenge for any business that wants to grow.  The prize for getting this right is a marketing team that goes from flat-out busy to strategic, with exponential results. 

AI at work. Human at heart

Strong brands grow revenue more than twice as fast as weaker ones, and are not built on technology alone. They’ve been built on insight, creativity, empathy, and a deep understanding of human behavior. Technology evolves. The fundamentals don’t. And that’s exactly why we knew it was the right time to build a human-first brand, reflective of a platform with AI at its core, where marketers lead the way. 

Our refreshed identity reflects a simple belief: marketing works best when technology gives people space to be human.

AI has already changed how marketers work, in a good way. It can analyze vast amounts of customer data in seconds, identify patterns that would take humans days to uncover, generate content, build sophisticated automations, and help brands communicate across multiple channels at a scale that would have seemed impossible a few years ago.

There are genuine advantages to building a marketing strategy that embraces AI. I encourage every marketer to spend time experimenting with AI, learning its strengths, understanding its limitations, and finding new ways to incorporate it into their daily work, while still leading their own skills and thoughts. Because there is a stark difference between using AI and outsourcing your thinking to it.

The marketers who succeed in the years ahead won’t be the ones who simply produce more content or automate more processes. They’ll be the ones who use AI to create the time and headspace needed for higher-value work. Understanding cultural context, spotting emerging shifts in customer behavior, building a distinctive brand voice, and developing creative ideas that people remember — the marketing elements that create real emotional connections, earning trust and attention.

Staying relevant 

Professor Byron Sharp’s work on mental availability reminds us that brands grow when they are easy to think of and easy to buy. Distinctive assets, memorable experiences, and consistent brand building remain central to that goal. All of which are built with humans at the helm.

AI can certainly help execute against those principles, but it cannot, as yet, create meaningful distinctiveness on its own. It can only draw from what already exists. This is becoming increasingly important as generative AI makes it easy for anyone and everyone to produce content. But unless that content offers a unique, authentic perspective – or includes stats, data, and information that people haven’t already seen or heard – it is just adding to the noise of a crowded market. When everyone has access to similar tools and uses the same prompts, it’s inevitable that marketing starts to become repetitive and risks losing relevance. We all see examples of this every day, everywhere. Polished copy that says very little, content that feels technically correct but emotionally flat.

Today’s hybrid team unites tech and talent 

This is what will shape the next chapter of marketing. And it’s what inspired our most recent Dotdigital developments – AI-assisted marketing. Our agentic AI proposition is fast evolving —  and marketers can now engage with AI in ways that serve them: through agents built directly into our marketing platform, and through Dotdigital’s MCP integrations, which let marketers retrieve information and take action inside their LLM of choice. 

The need for this couldn’t be clearer. Our recent Secret Lives of Marketers survey found that 99% of marketers are already using AI — but only 36% enjoy doing so. That gap matters. It tells us that AI has arrived in marketing, but it hasn’t yet earned its place. All while marketers risk losing their seat at the table because businesses haven’t yet felt the full cost of human displacement.

We want to change that.

The future we’re building is one where AI handles complexity, so marketers can focus on what only they can do. We want to help marketers spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time creating meaningful experiences. Understanding customer behavior, building smarter automations, personalizing experiences, and creating content that’s rooted in real customer insight, with marketers firmly in the driving seat.

The brands that succeed will be those that find the right balance between automation and authenticity. Your customers deserve communication from brands that stand for something. Technology provides speed, scale, and intelligence, but it is marketers who provide the creativity and direction. Technology and talent are not competing forces; they complement each other perfectly.

The future of marketing isn’t human versus AI. It’s human plus AI. As we watch tools and technology continue to evolve over time, we must remember that the need to understand people and build real connections is here to stay. Let’s put AI to work, stay human at heart, and build brands worth remembering. 

Marketers need data that‘s complete, current, and immediately usable. When it’s fragmented, decisions slow down for your marketing team and for your business as a whole. Opportunities pass by, results plateau, and manual data exports create more chaos than clarity.

And when you could outperform your peers by 26% using real-time data, a single, connected data stream is the difference between reacting and staying ahead. It gives marketing, tech, and operations teams a shared, live view of every customer, ready to power the right message at the right time.

Dotdigital connects with your data warehouse so you can quickly turn insight into action. By syncing with platforms like Snowflake, BigQuery, or Databricks, you can start building campaigns using real-time data, so every message lands at the right moment, feels genuinely relevant, and doesn’t require a heavy lift from you or your team.

Connecting your data warehouse to your marketing channels

Data warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery and Databricks give businesses a secure, unified place to store and govern their data. So, when we launched integrations with these platforms, it was a chance to bring marketers the seamless data flow to turn data into unforgettable customer experiences. Combined with Dotdigital, your data stops sitting in storage and starts driving meaningful moments across channels like:

• Email
• SMS
• WhatsApp
• Web
• Push
• Social 

Our integrations leave no gap between knowing and doing. Information in your data warehouse flows straight into Dotdigital to be used in your campaigns, while engagement results from Dotdigital return to your warehouse for deeper insight. Your data keeps moving, your marketing keeps learning, and nothing goes stale.

Reducing friction between marketing and tech teams

Busy marketing teams can’t wait three days for the latest results to be downloaded, then uploaded to your email automation platform. When data feeds directly into Dotdigital, you can:

• Adjust journeys mid‑flow
• Launch segments in minutes
• Deliver hyper‑relevant content based on the latest customer behaviors

At the same time, data and tech teams need precision and control. These integrations help you:

• Meet governance standards
• Keep sensitive data securely housed
• Remove duplicate storage and risky sharing practices

When everyone works from the same single data source, friction between teams disappears. Plans move faster, creativity gets sharper, and everyone’s working toward the same goal with the same information.

The business impact of connected data

Connected data makes your marketing work better:

• Campaigns land because they’re timed and relevant
• Teams stop wasting hours on avoidable data exchanges
• Compliance becomes simpler because the governance sits inside the integration

As marketing execution speeds up, you see a direct impact with quicker campaign launches, higher conversion rates, and engagement that doesn’t plateau six weeks later. 

A customer data platform (CDP) trusted by marketers

One more thing before we share what connected data looks like in action: Dotdigital was recently named a G2 Leader for Customer Data Platforms (CDP) in the Summer 2026 rankings. Every ranking is based on verified reviews from real customers, so you know you’re in good hands.

What this looks like in action

When Dotdigital connects with data warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks, it starts to change how everyday marketing gets done. With data syncing smoothly in the background, teams can:

Capitalize on sudden spikes in interest

Your data warehouse shows an unexpected surge in sales for a product. Dotdigital then pinpoints customers who’ve shown interest and sends timely promotions without waiting for a data upload.

Personalize product recommendation journeys

Your data warehouse reveals the product categories customers explore most. Dotdigital turns that insight into personalized emails, push messages, and social ads with product recommendations based on what’s trending.

Deliver back‑in‑stock and new‑arrival alerts

When product availability changes in your data warehouse, whether an out‑of‑stock favorite is replenished or a new item lands, Dotdigital instantly sends a customer a personalized alert.

Prevent customer churn in real time

When your data warehouse indicates a premium subscriber is overdue for a repeat purchase, Dotdigital enrolls them into an automated cross-channel retention sequence. Once they buy, that transaction flows back into your data warehouse, closing the loop and keeping their profile up to date. 

Ready to push, pull, and personalize?

Dotdigital’s data warehouse integrations help you avoid compromises, like finding clunky workarounds or having to duplicate data at the expense of accuracy. It’s built for marketers and data teams alike. With one source of truth, you’ll have endless opportunities to turn data into meaningful moments for your customers.

Social Snowball is an incredible platform that’s been making waves in the influencer, affiliate, and referral marketing space, and I couldn’t be more impressed with what their team has built. From the very first conversation, it was clear that our values, vision, and culture were deeply aligned. That’s why I’m so happy to welcome the entire Social Snowball team to the Dotdigital family.

So, what does this mean for our customers, partners, and the wider marketing community?
Let’s start with the big picture. At Dotdigital, we’ve always been focused on helping marketers create meaningful, data-driven customer experiences. With the addition of Social Snowball, we’re taking that mission to the next level. Their platform helps ecommerce brands to convert customers, influencers, and affiliates into passionate brand advocates, who promote products they love in exchange for rewards or commissions. It’s word-of-mouth marketing, supercharged by data and automation.

This is a huge win for marketers. Traditional paid channels are becoming harder to track and more expensive to scale. With privacy updates like iOS changes and rising media costs, brands are looking for smarter, more sustainable ways to grow. That’s where Social Snowball shines. The platform is built from the ground up with analytics at its core, giving marketers full visibility into what’s working, from clicks and impressions all the way through to referrals and real revenue.

As social media and ecommerce continue to dominate consumer behavior, influencer and affiliate marketing has become an essential part of the marketing mix, with over 63% of brands planning partnerships with influencers in 2025 and over 25% of companies allocating more than 40% of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing.

By bringing Social Snowball into the Dotdigital fold, we’re extending the capabilities of our marketing and customer experience platform. The integration between the two platforms will provide marketers with an effective, yet simple way to reach more customers and achieve greater ROI from word of mouth marketing.

Social Snowball’s strong presence in the Shopify ecosystem is another exciting aspect of this partnership. With over 1,500 subscription-based Shopify customers, including standout brands like G Fuel, Brez, and True Classic, this acquisition strengthens our presence in a high-growth category we’re really excited about. It aligns perfectly with our strategy to provide even more marketers with easy access to Dotdigital’s technology.

This marks another milestone in our vision to build the leading all-in-one marketing and customer experience platform. With the addition of influencer, affiliate, and referral marketing capabilities, we’re now the first company to bring these powerful channels together. And we couldn’t be prouder. It’s a game-changer for marketers who want to diversify their strategies with trusted, authentic advocacy.

In terms of business operations, both businesses will continue to operate independently. This approach allows us to preserve what makes each company special, while also supporting each other and our customers with the best of both worlds.

The creator economy isn’t just about awareness, it’s about driving real results. Together with Social Snowball, we’re giving brands what they need to do just that. Whether it’s engaging loyal customers, partnering with influencers, or building performance-driven affiliate programs, we’re excited to help marketers turn relationships into results.

To the Social Snowball team: welcome aboard! Your innovation, passion, and commitment to customer success are truly inspiring. I’m excited for what we’ll achieve together. And to our customers and partners: thank you for your continued trust.

Here’s to the next chapter!
—
Milan Patel
CEO, Dotdigital Group

Partnering for sustainable marketing

Provenance is on a mission to give consumers the info they need to make buying decisions that benefit both people and the planet. Their innovative platform helps retailers share credible, trustworthy social and environmental impact details where it matters most – at the point of sale.

As the first (and only) carbon-neutral cross-channel marketing automation platform out there, we’re a perfect fit for Provenance’s values. We’re also ISO-14001 accredited – which means we meet the International Standard Organisation’s requirements for environmental management systems. This makes Dotdigital the go-to choice for sustainability-minded brands looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

Tink Taylor, Founder & of Dotdigital, said it best, “I’m always supremely impressed by the Dotdigital committees such as DotGreen, DotDEI and DotWellbeing. It’s our employees’ voices who push initiatives like becoming carbon-neutral and ISO-14001 certified forward. And it keeps Dotdigital striving for a more positive impact socially and environmentally. We’re very proud to be the first and only carbon-neutral marketing automation platform.”

Jessi Baker, Founder & CEO of Provenance, added: “Together, we’ll help companies on their path to sustainability, aiming for a future where every purchase helps people and our planet.”

Working together for a greener future

Our partnership with Provenance is all about helping consumers make greener, more sustainable choices. We’re joining forces to support retailers that are serious about their sustainability claims and environmental responsibilities. This means helping companies use marketing technology that matches their mission and nudges customers toward more ethical purchasing decisions. Together, we’re paving the way for informed, earth-friendly shopping choices. Keep your eyes peeled for more news, tips, and insights about this exciting partnership. As a team, we’ll make a real difference for people, the planet, and the world of digital marketing.