MailchimpOpen-tracking pixel, click tracking and unsubscribe

Open tracking is enabled by default except on plain-text emails.

Caveat Enabled by default, an image "unique to each email" served from Mailchimp's servers — but the page never names the default serving domain (list-manage.com is an observation from our corpus, not vendor data). Nothing on how automations behave, nor on an account setting.

About Open Tracking · Help centre · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence medium

Click tracking is enabled in Mailchimp emails by default.

Caveat Disabling documented per email only (Track clicks checkbox, section "Turn click tracking on or off"). A decisive point on the same page: after disabling, Mailchimp keeps rewriting URLs — systematically on free accounts, and on paid accounts "jusqu'à certains seuils d'activité" (up to certain activity thresholds) — for anti-abuse purposes. The link therefore remains rewritten without reporting: to be measured on our side on a "tracking off" send. Nothing on transactional emails here (see granularite-reglages).

Enable and View Click Tracking · Help centre · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence medium

A "Track opens" box can be unticked when sending a campaign, and that is all the tool offers. Tracking stays on by default, and nothing allows it to be left out for the contacts who have granted nothing.

Observations in the interface, first batch · Interface · last reviewed on 08/04/2026 · confidence medium

unsubscribe link, your emails will also include the List-Unsubscribe header by default

Caveat A conditional sentence — on the transactional side, the header is present only if the automatic unsubscribe link is included (or if the sender supplies its own header via SMTP/API). On the marketing side, its presence is stated indirectly (About Unsubscribes page, cited in the rfc-8058 block), but mailto: versus URL and the possibility of disabling it are documented nowhere.

Outbound Email · API documentation · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence high

transactional emails do not require the recipient to be subscribed

Caveat A clear product separation (Mailchimp Marketing versus Mailchimp Transactional, separate accounts and pipelines). But the unsubscribe link is recommended there, not removed automatically, and open/click tracking remains active by default on transactional emails (see granularite-reglages): the exception concerns the unsubscribe obligation, not tracking.

About Transactional Email · Help centre · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence medium

To do this, you’ll need to copy and paste 2 CNAME records

Caveat The quoted sentence opens the step "Create a new DKIM record" (Method 2: Manual Authentication Steps): DKIM is set up through 2 CNAMEs on the brand's domain. Selectors k2/k3 appear only in a troubleshooting example ("k2._domainkey"), never stated as a commitment — our recognition of the sending platform on s=k1/k2/k3 remains an observation from the corpus. The page does not say which domain the signature falls back to without authentication.

Set Up Email Domain Authentication · Help centre · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence medium

setting up a DMARC policy, configuring your DNS for DKIM authentication

Caveat Alignment on the authenticated domain is possible and the marketing flow has a _dmarc TXT record published, but the recommended policy (p=none? stricter?) does not appear in what was read — the choice seems to be left to the brand. The value of the example TXT could not be reproduced: to be checked on screen.

Authentication & Delivery · API documentation · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence high

The domain must have been added already with the add-tracking-domain call

Caveat Documented on the transactional side only (add/check/list endpoints, verified CNAME, deleting a valid domain not possible via the API). Optional, no date of introduction. Nothing found for marketing campaigns: no tracking CNAME documented, which leaves every marketing click naming Mailchimp's infrastructure — supported by observation in our corpus, not by the documentation.

Transactional API Reference · API documentation · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence high

Mailchimp will also keep a record of what each version of your form says

Caveat Versioning applies to the form (which checkboxes were present at submission), not to a contact's successive consent states with date and origin. The documented export (gdpr-faq) gives the current permission and OPTIN_TIME, not a history. An old post: whether this mechanism still exists as described is precisely what needs to be observed.

New GDPR Tools From Mailchimp · Vendor blog · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence low

you can override those settings on a per-message basis

Caveat An explicit hierarchy on the transactional side only: Sending Defaults at account level, overridden per message via the API or the X-MC-Track SMTP header — the message takes precedence. On the marketing side: switches per email only, no list or contact level documented, and no text on which prevails in case of conflict. This is the item that most justifies a check in the tool.

Activity & Reports · API documentation · last reviewed on 08/16/2026 · confidence high