For years, marketers have declared that open rates were dead. In fact, I spoke to open rates on their own being a vanity metric in The 2026 Metrics That Matter Most (And Why Vanity Metrics Don’t).

Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflated them. Security scanners distorted them. Image proxying made them increasingly unreliable. Before long, open rates had become the metric everyone claimed not to care about—while quietly continuing to use the to trigger automations, judge campaign performance, and celebrate success.

Now, privacy regulators are entering the conversation.

In 2026, France’s data protection authority finalized guidance that treats email tracking pixels much like cookies, meaning organizations generally need consent before tracking whether an email has been opened. Italy followed with similar guidance, requiring prior consent for most tracking-pixel use cases.

Whether other countries ultimately follow suit remains to be seen. But the message is becoming increasingly clear:

The era of assuming every email open is fair game may be coming to an end.

Ironically, the legal debate is arriving several years after the marketing debate should have.

Because here’s the truth:

Open rates were never the business outcome.

They were simply evidence that an image loaded.

For years, we’ve mistaken an activity metric for a success metric.

An open doesn’t tell you whether someone read your message.

It doesn’t tell you whether they understood it.

It certainly doesn’t tell you whether they changed their behavior because of it.

That’s what marketers should have been measuring all along.

Stop Measuring opens. Start measuring intent.

Every CRM message is sent with a purpose.

Not every email is supposed to generate a purchase.

Some are designed to educate.

Some are meant to build trust.

Some exist to encourage a profile update.

Some introduce a new feature or service.

Some simply aim to prevent churn.

If the objective changes, your measurement should change with it.

Instead of asking, “Did they open?” ask:

– Did they activate their account?
– Did they complete onboarding?
– Did they redeem the offer?
– Did they update their preferences?
– Did they visit the new feature we introduced?
– Did they renew or subscribe?
– Did they make their first purchase? Did they make a secondary purchase?
– Did they become more engaged over time?

Those are customer behaviors.

Those are business outcomes.

Those are the metrics executives actually care about.

Every email should have one behavioral goal

One of the biggest mistakes I see is measuring every campaign with the same handful of KPIs.

Open rate.

Click rate.

Conversion rate.

Unsubscribe rate.

Those numbers tell you what happened inside the email.

They rarely tell you whether the communication accomplished its purpose.

Before building any campaign, define one behavioral objective.

If it’s a welcome email, success might be completing profile setup.

If it’s an abandoned cart email, success is recovering the purchase.

If it’s a product education campaign, success may be adopting a new feature within seven days.

If it’s a loyalty campaign, success could be a second purchase inside 30 days.

Once you define the desired behavior, the analytics become much simpler.

You’re no longer measuring email performance. You’re measuring customer movement.

The future of CRM isn’t better reporting

It’s better decision-making.

The most sophisticated lifecycle teams aren’t asking whether someone opened an email.

They’re asking whether the communication changed the customer’s trajectory.

Did it accelerate a purchase?

Did it reduce the risk of churn?

Did it increase lifetime value?

Did it move someone one step closer to becoming a loyal customer?

Those are the questions that matter.

Because customers don’t care whether your tracking pixel fired.

Your CEO doesn’t care either (at least, he shouldn’t).

And increasingly, regulators may not want you relying on it (I certainly don’t).

Open rates aren’t dead.

But if the lawyers have anything to say about it, they may soon be serving a long sentence.

The good news?

Your CRM strategy doesn’t have to.