IEM 8.8.0 gives you five ways to measure what happens after an email is sent. The choice affects the message each recipient receives, the data IEM keeps, and the statistics you can use later. This guide explains those differences so you can configure each audience with a clear picture of what the software will do.
The modes are Off, Minimal (date only), Aggregate (anonymous), Individual (consented) and Individual. These names match the options shown in IEM.
Start with the information you need
Suppose you send the same newsletter to five different lists. With Off, IEM delivers it without measuring opens or clicks. With Minimal, you can later tell which contacts have opened an email, but you cannot see how this campaign performed. With Aggregate, you can see the campaign’s total opens and clicks, but not who generated them. The two Individual modes give you activity tied to contacts; the consented mode checks their recorded choices before enabling that tracking.
That is the decision the mode selector puts in front of you: do you need no measurement, one last-opened date, campaign totals, or activity for each recipient? Open and click checkboxes remain available under Advanced.
Off
IEM sends no tracking pixel and leaves destination links unchanged. It records no opens or clicks for the campaign. This is the simplest choice when you do not need engagement data.
Minimal (date only)
Minimal stores one day-level date against a contact: the last day they opened one of your emails. A later open replaces the earlier date. IEM does not keep a row for every open, the time of day, IP address or device information. It does not track clicks in this mode, even if click tracking was enabled for the campaign.
The pixel still identifies the recipient because IEM needs to know which date to update. Minimal reduces what is stored; it is not the same as anonymous measurement. If a recipient has explicitly stopped tracking, IEM does not send a Minimal pixel or update their date.
There is a reporting trade-off. Campaign open and click figures appear as not available, not zero: Minimal does not collect the event history needed to calculate them. The ordinary has opened and has not opened Any Email Campaign filters can still use the date. That lets you find contacts who have never opened or who have shown some engagement. A filter for one named campaign cannot use the date because the stored value does not say which campaign was opened. IEM 8.8.0 also does not offer a date-cutoff filter for Minimal; the available filter answers ever or never.
Minimal is useful when that broad list-hygiene signal is all you need. The France/CNIL operator guide discusses the separate French guidance. IEM does not determine whether Minimal is suitable for any particular audience.
Aggregate (anonymous)
Aggregate measures the campaign as a whole. Every recipient receives the same open pixel for that campaign. IEM counts opens and clicks without creating a per-recipient activity record. IP address and user-agent data can be examined to identify bot activity, then are discarded rather than stored with an event.
Your report can tell you how many opens and clicks the campaign received. It cannot tell you which contact opened it, show a per-recipient activity list, or calculate unique opens and clicks. Those unique figures appear as not available. A split test can still choose a winner from campaign totals, and its report labels the figures as aggregate.
Aggregate requires SENDSTUDIO_TRACKING_KEY in the IEM configuration. Without that key, the mode is not offered in the selector. A split test explicitly set to Aggregate refuses to send rather than silently using another mode. See the upgrade and deployment notes before configuring it.
Individual (consented)
This mode can provide per-recipient opens, clicks and engagement reports, but IEM checks the recipient’s recorded tracking preferences. A recipient who has agreed can receive tracked links and an open pixel. A recipient whose preference does not permit the selected tracking receives an untracked message instead.
You can collect a preference through subscribe forms using the disclosure text you set for the list. The %%trackingpreferencelink%% merge tag leads to a page where recipients can change their choices or stop tracking without unsubscribing. When a recipient withdraws permission to store tracking activity, IEM removes their existing open and click records. It also refuses to record new activity from messages that were sent before the withdrawal. The destination of an existing link remains reachable.
There is one important setting for contacts who were already on your list before IEM had a recorded tracking choice for them. IEM calls their state legacy. Under the Off legacy policy, they are not tracked until they choose to allow it. Under Transitional, they continue to be tracked and receive a notice with a stop-tracking link. IEM does not end the Transitional policy automatically. Review that policy when you enable Individual (consented); the upgrade notes explain where it is set and how notices are added.
Individual
Individual is the traditional per-recipient mode. IEM records opens and clicks against contacts, so you can see individual activity, unique opens, click maps and segments based on behaviour. It does not require an affirmative recorded choice before enabling tracking. An explicit withdrawal still prevents new open and click records from being written when a recipient uses a message already in their inbox.
This is the account default after upgrading to 8.8.0. Existing campaigns, autoresponders, triggers and lists keep the tracking behaviour they had before the upgrade, so an upgrade does not silently change their reports. Review your defaults if you want future sends to use another mode.
How defaults and overrides work
The account setting is the starting point. A user can have their own default; a list can override its owner’s user default; and a campaign can select a mode for that send. If a user or list has no explicit choice, it inherits the setting above it. That gives you a way to set different starting points for different lists while keeping one account-wide fallback.
A list set to Individual (consented) also stops anything sent to that list from using unconditional Individual. Otherwise a single send could ignore the consent choices the list exists to respect. This applies whether the list sets the mode itself or inherits it, and when a send goes to several lists, one such list is enough. Other modes, such as Aggregate or Minimal, remain available. How IEM enforces this depends on what you send:
- Campaigns and autoresponders that select Individual are switched to Individual (consented), so only recipients who have agreed are tracked.
- Trigger emails keep one set of statistics for everyone they send to, so the rule applies to the whole trigger. If any list a trigger can send to requires consent, the trigger uses Individual (consented) for every recipient, whichever list they are on. For a trigger based on a newsletter open or link click, that includes every list the newsletter was sent to. If the newsletter is later sent to a new list that requires consent, the first recipient from that list receives the email without tracking, and the trigger uses Individual (consented) from then on. Contacts who were on your lists before IEM recorded tracking choices are tracked under the Transitional policy only when every list the trigger can send to uses Transitional.
- Split tests cannot be sent with Individual to such a list. Choose Aggregate instead. A split test picks its winner by comparing every version across the whole audience, and it cannot do that fairly when tracking depends on each recipient’s choice. For the same reason, split tests do not support Individual (consented). Aggregate needs the tracking key, so without that key a split test cannot be sent to a list that requires consent.
IEM checks the list setting when you send or schedule a campaign or split test. A send you scheduled before changing a list keeps the mode it was scheduled with, so review scheduled sends after you change a list to Individual (consented). Autoresponders and trigger emails are checked each time they send.
Start at Settings → Email settings → Email tracking defaults, then check the defaults for users and lists that manage different audiences. The upgrade and deployment notes cover the related disclosure, legacy and retention settings.
Open and click controls still exist
The mode says how tracking works. The Advanced controls let you choose which channels to measure within that mode. You can, for example, measure clicks without an open pixel or measure opens without rewriting links. Minimal never measures clicks, and Off measures neither, regardless of those controls.
Click tracking sends the recipient through an IEM redirect before the destination page. Turning it off keeps the original link. Open tracking adds a pixel, but mail clients and security scanners can affect what an open count means. Use the Advanced controls when one of those channels is more useful to you than the other.
Where to go next
- Read the 8.8.0 upgrade and deployment notes for the settings, tracking key, scheduled cleanup and reporting changes.
- Read Email tracking and the Italian Garante’s pixel guidance for the background to the Italian announcement.
- Read the France/CNIL operator guide for its separate source material and product walkthrough.
IEM supplies these controls and describes what they do. You decide how to configure them and what to tell your subscribers. Interspire makes no claim that choosing a mode satisfies any particular legal requirement.
