Salesforce Marketing CloudOpen-tracking pixel, click tracking and unsubscribe
Salesforce Marketing Cloud can insert an open-tracking pixel. In our corpus, 506 of the 544 emails sent through Salesforce Marketing Cloud, by 66 brands, loaded an open-tracking pixel (93%).
Enterprise · vendor's site ↗ · code salesforce-mc
Customer engagement platform from the Salesforce group, aimed at large enterprises. Each client sends from its own instance, hence a signature carried by the headers rather than by the domain.
Postmetry reference sheet
What the vendor says, checked by us
3 sources · last reviewed on 10/17/2026. Still not checked: Click tracking, Exclusion by campaign, Consent — absence means no pixel, Native consent collection, Tracking anonymization, List-Unsubscribe, RFC 8058 — one click, Preferences page, Transactional exceptions, DKIM, SPF, DMARC, Sending domain, Tracking domain, Logging, API, Consent history.
Postmetry corpus
What brands actually send
544 messages received from 08/03/2026 to 10/31/2026.
Postmetry reference sheet
What this ESP allows
Catalog shared by both pages. Each note carries its source, its date, and its confidence level.
On the right, what our emails say about it: matching, contradicted, never observed despite the volume, too few emails to conclude — or out of reach, when the capability can't be read from an email.
Tracking 5 not verified
Open pixel Yes 2 notes · 17/10/2026 Consistent seen on 455 of 488 emails from 55 brands, 3 months
in accounts without Do Not Track, Marketing Cloud Engagement tracking IDs are applied
Caveat The default is established by implication and unambiguously: without Do Not Track, tracking identifiers are applied when each message is rendered. Scope: Marketing Cloud Engagement (Email Studio / Contact Builder).
Do Not Track Email Opens and Clicks · Help centre · last reviewed on 08/23/2026 · confidence medium
The tracking feature uses a 1x1 pixel transparent GIF image to track information. The pixel is automatically inserted into every email unless you use an HTML-Paste template.
Caveat Value unchanged, source moved: the passage in our database talks about tracking identifiers ("tracking IDs"); this one names the image and its automatic insertion in every email. The only written exception: an email built by pasting HTML ("HTML-Paste"). A subscriber's Do Not Track preference removes the identifiers at rendering; the document does not say whether the image remains.
Marketing Email (Spring ’26) — Tracking in Email Studio · Help centre · page dated 03/31/2026 · last reviewed on 10/17/2026 · confidence high
Exclusion by contact Yes 1 note · 17/10/2026 Out of reach
At the individual level, you can create a Do Not Track attribute that checks individual preferences at send-time. If a recipient disables tracking, the system automatically removes the open-tracking pixel and click-tracking wrappers from the email.
Caveat "Marketing Cloud Engagement" section of the FAQ. Re-read on 17 October 2026 from a capture made in a browser: the help centre renders only in JavaScript, so the import will report it as undetermined. With no value, the subscriber remains tracked ("A value of 0, false, or null keeps tracking enabled").
Tracking Pixels in Marketing Email Communications · Help centre · page dated 08/24/2026 · last reviewed on 10/17/2026 · confidence high
Native consent collection Not verified À valider 1 note Out of reach
You can only update the setting through the application, preference center, and API calls. [...] Every email that you send through Email Studio contains a link to the Profile Center for subscribers to use. [...] Subscribers see all the attributes defined in your account that you don't mark as hidden.
Caveat No page describes collecting the Do Not Track choice from the subscriber. The list of update routes is closed ("only"), but it includes a preference centre. The same document describes a Profile Center hosted by Salesforce, linked by default from every Email Studio email, where subscribers can see and modify any attribute that is not hidden; and DoNotTrack is created as a preference attribute. No page links this Profile Center to Do Not Track: it is a possible assembly that the vendor does not describe, and not a written absence. Application at send time is documented (FAQ "Tracking Pixels in Marketing Email Communications", see exclusion-par-contact). Box left open, to be observed in the tool. The PDF reflects the text of 31 March 2026 ("Do Not Track Email Opens and Clicks" and "Profile Center for Marketing Cloud Engagement" pages).
Marketing Email (Spring ’26) — Do Not Track Email Opens and Clicks · Help centre · page dated 03/31/2026 · last reviewed on 10/17/2026 · confidence high
Traceable choice Yes 1 note · 17/10/2026 Out of reach
Enable Do Not Track by selecting the DoNotTrack subscriber preference on the subscriber’s properties in Email Studio. … After the attribute is set, you can't overwrite a subscriber’s DoNotTrack settings with an import. You can only update the setting through the application, preference center, and API calls.
Caveat The choice lives on the subscriber's record, in a DoNotTrack preference attribute, and once set it is no longer overwritten by an import. The page does not mention export: it can be inferred from the export of a list, which lets you choose the attributes to export ("Export a List"), without naming DoNotTrack. No history of changes is described.
Marketing Email (Spring ’26) — Do Not Track Email Opens and Clicks · Help centre · page dated 03/31/2026 · last reviewed on 10/17/2026 · confidence high
Unsubscribe 4 not verified
Authentication 5 not verified
Infrastructure & governance 3 not verified
Granularity of settings Yes 1 note · 17/10/2026 Out of reach
When the default value is set to No, email opens and clicks are tracked by default. To suppress email tracking opens and clicks for subscribers, set the default value to Yes.
Caveat One setting per subscriber (the DoNotTrack attribute), with a default value that applies across the whole account; opens and clicks are switched off together. The document describes no open-tracking setting per send: the send's "Track Clicks" checkbox (Send Flow) covers only clicks.
Marketing Email (Spring ’26) — Configure a Preference Attribute for Do Not Track Email Opens and Clicks · Help centre · page dated 03/31/2026 · last reviewed on 10/17/2026 · confidence high
Postmetry corpus
Observed in our corpus
Recorded by our analyzers on messages received on addresses we control. Nothing from the reference sheet here, no access to the tool.
Out of the 544 messages received
506 messages out of 544
521 messages out of 544
521 messages out of 544
0 messages out of 509
Period observed
08/2026 → 31/10/2026
3 months, 66 distinct brands.
Identification signals
What we recognized the sending platform by, message by message.
- X-SFMC-Stack 98 %
- exacttarget.com 2 %
Limits of this analysis
It doesn't say what a brand has actually configured. A sending platform that allows turning off the pixel says nothing about which brands have done so — that's what a brand's report answers.
It doesn't rank. No score, no recommendation: capabilities don't carry the same weight depending on the use, and that weight isn't ours to set.
A “not checked” cell is not a “no”. It says nobody has gone to look yet, and nothing else.
The corpus does not establish a capability. A rate of observed pixels says what brands send, not what the tool can do.
Sources
3 sources- Do Not Track Email Opens and Clicks Help centre · confidence medium 23/08/2026
- Tracking Pixels in Marketing Email Communications Help centre · confidence high 17/10/2026
- Marketing Email (Spring ’26) — Tracking in Email Studio Help centre · confidence high 17/10/2026
Comparable sending platforms
Compare the whole family →Do your emails go through Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
The sending platform is read from the headers, not from a claim. The report names it, and says where to fix the findings with that vendor.