How do people agree to opens and clicks being recorded?
Nobody is recorded because you turned a switch on. Your site switch decides whether recording is possible at all; each individual reader still has to agree, on their own screen, in their own words. This page is how that happens.
The prompt
“Tell me how many of my people have agreed to opens and clicks being recorded on [my site], and how someone agrees or stops.”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
The two places somebody agrees
When they confirm a signup. After somebody fills in one of your forms, bernard emails them a confirmation button. On the page that button leads to, one extra sentence appears above it, naming your business:
Yes, keep me posted. [Your business] will also see which of their emails you open and which links you press, including your approximate location and the mail app you use, for up to a year. You can stop this at any time from the link in every email.
Pressing the button records two things: their permission to be emailed, and their agreement to be counted. The exact words they read are stored alongside the answer, so a year later it is still clear what they said yes to.
That sentence only appears on sites where recording is actually possible. If your site is not recording, the page is exactly the page it always was, with no sentence at all. Bernard will not show somebody a promise it is not in a position to keep.
On their preferences page. Everybody else - buyers, people who confirmed before this existed, anybody who wants to change their mind - uses a switch on their own preferences page. It reads Let [Your business] see which emails I open, it starts off, and the same sentence sits above it. The switch only appears where recording is possible for your site.
The link that takes a reader straight to that page from an email is still being added. Until it is, the page exists but is not signposted, which is one honest reason your agreed count may start small.
Nobody is counted retrospectively
Every confirmation somebody pressed before this feature existed was pressed against wording that said nothing about opens and clicks. None of them count. Those people are not recorded, and the only way they become recorded is by agreeing themselves on the preferences page.
That is the right answer even though it makes the first numbers look thin. A permission you cannot point at a sentence for is not a permission.
Stopping
The same switch turns it off. Pressing it appends a new entry saying they have stopped; nothing is edited or deleted, so the record of what they agreed to and when they changed their mind both survive.
From that moment nothing new is recorded for them. What was already recorded stays until it ages out after a year, exactly as it would have done. Withdrawal stops the recording; it is not an erasure, and bernard says so rather than promising more than it does. What does bernard do with my data, and is it GDPR-compliant? covers erasure, which is a different request with a different route.
Reading where you stand
Ask Bernard:
How many of my people have agreed to opens and clicks being recorded?
You get one sentence: whether recording is on, and how many of your contacts have agreed against how many you hold. It counts people; it never names them, so it is safe to ask in front of anybody.
Where it fits
Can I see who opened my email? is the switch, the Terms and what the numbers mean. Who can see that I opened this email? is the same story written for your reader, and is worth reading so you know what they are told. How does unsubscribing from my emails work? covers the other control on the same page.
Questions people ask
- Do I have to ask people myself?
- No, and you should not write your own wording for it. Bernard shows the exact sentence in the two places it belongs, records which words each person actually read, and keeps the record. Nothing you approve in a campaign changes what those pages say.
- My contacts already confirmed their email. Do they count?
- No. Everyone who confirmed before this existed pressed a button whose wording said nothing about opens and clicks, so none of those confirmations count. They are not recorded until they agree separately on the preferences page. This is deliberate: a yes to one thing is not a yes to another.
- What exactly are people agreeing to?
- That you will see which of your emails they open and which links they press, including their approximate location and the mail app they use, for up to a year, and that they can stop it at any time. That is the sentence they read, and the words they read are stored with their answer.
- Can I add somebody myself, or ask Bernard to?
- No. There is no route for you or for Bernard to record somebody as having agreed. It has to be their own press on their own screen, which is the point. Bernard will refuse the request rather than find a way round it, in the same way it refuses to lift an unsubscribe.
- What happens when somebody stops it?
- New opens and clicks stop being recorded from that moment. What was already recorded stays until it ages out after a year. Stopping is not the same as erasing; if somebody asks you to erase their record, that is a separate request and bernard has a route for it.
- Does unsubscribing also stop it?
- Yes, because they stop receiving your marketing email, so there is nothing left to record. The two settings are separate controls on the same preferences page and a person can use either.