Pendo uses tracking and cookies to identify visitors and deliver the right guides at the right time. When visitors opt out of tracking, that contextual data isn't available, but you can still reach them with critical in-app communications.
This article covers how to turn on guide delivery for visitors who are opted out of tracking, the restrictions that apply, and how opting out affects your metrics.
Before you begin
- You must have a Guides Pro subscription.
- You must be a subscription admin to view and edit visitor privacy settings.
- You must have your settings and web SDK configured to allow guide delivery to visitors opted out of tracking. For more information, see Set up guide delivery for opted-out visitors.
Understanding privacy states
Not all unidentified visitors are the same. Pendo distinguishes between two types:
- Anonymous visitors are visitors that Pendo has detected and is tracking, but who haven't been identified by your application (this may be because they did not sign in). Pendo assigns them a randomly generated ID. Their behavior is recorded, but they aren't associated with a known user. If they subsequently log in, their anonymous activity is merged with their identified Visitor ID so you have a full picture of their activity, even before they signed in.
- Visitors opted out of tracking are visitors who have actively declined data collection. For example, by rejecting cookies through a consent banner, or because your application has flagged them as subject to privacy regulations in markets like the EU. In these regions, visitors who don't explicitly consent to cookies are opted out by default. Opted-out visitors are fundamentally different from anonymous visitors: they have no user state, receive no analytics events, and cannot be merged into an identified visitor record. Pendo assigns opted-out visitors a unique prefixed ID per session, similar in structure to anonymous visitor IDs, but designed to avoid affecting your anonymous or identified visitor counts.
Understanding this distinction matters when you're setting up and creating guides, because the delivery rules and available settings differ depending on which group you're delivering to. This article focuses on visitors who are opted out of tracking and how to deliver guides to that audience.
Set up guide delivery for opted-out visitors
Before you can send guides to visitors who aren't tracked, you need to update your web SDK settings and your app-level cookie settings.
Step 1. Configure your web SDK settings
Modify your Pendo install script by adding the doNotTrackGuides property to the snippet:
pendo.initialize({ doNotTrackGuides: true });For full implementation details, see the Web SDK configuration.
Step 2. Update app-level cookie settings
The cookie settings control who receives guides.
- Go to Subscription settings > Applications.
- Choose the application you want to deliver the guides from.
- Go to the Cookies and data privacy section.
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Check the box to turn on Guides for untracked visitors.
Turn on guide delivery for visitors opted out of tracking
Once your app is configured, you can select a guide to deliver to visitors opted out of tracking.
- From the left-side menu, go to Guides > Guides.
- Open the guide you want to deliver to your audience.
- From the Settings tab, turn on the Deliver guide to visitors opted out of tracking option. After you turn on this for the guide, you can't edit the segment or guide goal.
Once turned on, the guide updates to reflect the change. An information banner appears confirming that some guide settings are now unavailable. This banner reminds you that the guide is visible to visitors who haven't consented to cookies or tracking and that certain guide settings can't be changed.
Note: If the option to Deliver guide to visitors opted out of tracking is inactive, check that the guide meets all the requirements for delivery.
Guide requirements and limitations
Because opted-out visitors have no user state, there is no information about who they are or how they've interacted with your application. Settings that rely on visitor data, behavioral logic, or personalization can't be applied to this audience. A guide must meet the following requirements before you can turn on delivery for opted-out visitors:
- Segment. The segment must be set to Everyone. This is because delivery to a specific segment requires data that is not available.
- Guide goal. The guide can't have a goal set. Guide goals track whether a visitor completes a specific action after viewing a guide. This is because no behavioral events are collected for opted-out visitors, so guide goals can't be measured and aren't supported.
- Experiments.The guide can't be part of an experiment. Experiments require visitor identification to distribute and measure guide variations.
- Activation. Activation must be set to Badge or Target Element. Only badge and target element guides are supported because they launch through a user action rather than automatically. Guides that launch automatically, such as those that run on page load or first sign-in, aren't available because no behavioral data is collected for opted-out visitors, which means that Pendo can’t determine whether a visitor has already seen the guide.
Other unsupported settings. Several additional settings aren't available for opted-out visitors, including conditional branching, cross-app guides, multi-step guides that span multiple pages, Guide Logic, and any personalization or segment-based delivery. Custom code blocks can still be added to guides, but may behave unexpectedly if they reference visitor data that isn't available for this audience.
Filter guides by visitor tracking status
You can use the filters on the guides Overview tab to quickly identify which guides are delivered to visitors who opted out of tracking.
- From the left-side menu, go to Guides > Guides.
- In the filter section at the top of the page, go to the Visitors filter and select Opted out of tracking.
Guide metrics for visitors opted out of tracking
When a guide is delivered to opted-out visitors, the analytics data available is limited. Pendo doesn’t collect page, Feature, or Track Event data for these visitors. Guide views are unidentifiable and there's no way to determine whether a view came from one visitor viewing the guide multiple times or from multiple different visitors.
- Guide views. On the Guide metrics tab, you can see the total number of views from opted-out visitors and the percentage those views represent overall. The bar chart breaks down views by first-time, repeat, and opted-out. Only tracked visitors count toward first-time and repeat view totals.
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Poll responses. If your guide includes a poll, responses from opted-out visitors are masked and appear as Opted-out visitor. These visitors are also excluded from the Visitor Seen row in poll response data.