BIMI: A breakdown for email marketers
BIMI, or Brand Indicators for Message Identification, is an email authentication standard that allows companies to display their logos in the inboxes of their email recipients. This standard is designed to help prevent email fraud and phishing by verifying the authenticity of the sender's domain and displaying a recognizable logo alongside the email.
Personally speaking, seeing logos next to emails is pretty nice in the inbox!
It’s important to note that the logo will displayed on the inbox feed view on mobile for most email clients, and on desktop, it will be displayed once you click into the email itself.
For most marketers, the prospect of implementing BIMI is an awe-worthy way to make their email stand out in the inbox. But the reality is it can be difficult to get buy-in from stakeholders.
Let’s break down what BIMI is and why your VP of Marketing might hesitate to sign off on it.
Where BIMI is supported
The most notable email clients that support BIMI are Apple, Gmail, and Yahoo. However, we shouldn’t forget the underdogs so I’ll include mention of them as prescribed by the BIMI AuthIndicators Working Group.
If your subscriber base weighs heavily on Microsoft Outlook (i.e., a lot of B2B organizations), this may not be an investment (both monetary and time) that you want to make at this time.
Who is BIMI really for?
This is the question everyone should think about before they kick off the process. Who is your audience? Are they heavily weighted on the email clients that support BIMI? Or is this primarily just for you (the email marketer) to hit a career milestone (if you answer yes to this, I have no judgment).
If you’re curious about what brands have adopted BIMI, BIMI Radar by Red Sift might be just the website for you. You can check out specific domains, as well as track what domains have recently obtained a VMC. Very cool!
The process of setting up
In short, BIMI is a record that lives in your DNS and includes the location of your logo saved as an SVG (in a square format).
You might be thinking, okay this seems pretty easy to set up a logo in the inbox, I like this — but unfortunately, there’s a bit more technicality to it. If you’re looking for a simple way to display your logo in the inbox on just Gmail (which many senders may have their audience weighted towards), I recommend reading this article from Peak Inbox, so long as we both are on the same page that this tactic is not BIMI.
In summary, setting up BIMI for your brand will involve work in your DNS records, a trademarked logo, a VMC, and, well, potentially, two years of your time.
The cost
This is where things get tricky.
A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) is a digital certificate issued by a certificate authority that verifies logo ownership. Your logo must be a registered trademark before receiving a VMC. A VMC verifies that your organization is the legal owner of your brand logo. This definition is as prescribed by [Google](https://support.google.com/a/answer/10911028?hl=en#:~:text=A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC,owner of your brand logo.).
VMCs are available from two BIMI-qualified Certification Authorities:
That’s right, these two companies have a duopoly on the VMC market. You can purchase a VMC for $1299 at Entrust, or $1499 at Digicert for the first domain and $499 for each additional root domain under the same logo. This cost will renew annually. Again, that’s right. This duopoly is about to cash in a hefty paycheck every year you want your logo to display in the inbox.
Once you have your VMC, you’ll need to create a simple SVG of your logo (no larger than 32kb) that you’ll host and link out to from your BIMI record.
For a lot of smaller teams, it can be hard to pull this budget out of thin air, and unless there are clear benefits you can point to BIMI producing, this topic is most likely going to be an upward battle convincing your VP or director why they should fork over this cost year over year.
The time commitment
Once you have everything in place, it can take only a couple of days to be operational (or whatever time it takes for your DNS records to propagate).
But backing it up one step, the time commitment it takes to get a trademark on a logo is where you’ll run into issues. Marketers report that obtaining a trademark can take upwards to a year, at times, potentially two.
Applying to register a trademark is a complicated process. For legal advice and assistance, you should contact a trademark lawyer. The following is an overview of the process. There are six main steps in the application process and it will usually take one to two years to register a trademark. - Legal line
So, with that in mind, you’ll need a budget and some time to work with legal on obtaining your trademark.
The implementation
To implement BIMI, email marketers must first authenticate their email using DKIM and SPF, two existing email authentication standards. They must also create a valid DMARC policy for their domain with either a reject or quarantine policy. This policy will tell inboxes to either reject or quarantine inbound emails that do not show a PASS on the DMARC value that matches yours. Once these steps are completed, the email marketer can then create a BIMI record that specifies the location of their logo image file.
BIMI should be published at the organization (parent domain) level, allowing it to then be inherited by all subdomains (because we all use subdomains to protect the parent domain — and if you don’t you need to start considering this immediately). That being said, if you intentionally want your subdomains to have separate logos you can absolutely publish BIMI at the subdomain level as well.
The experience
When a recipient receives an email that has been authenticated with BIMI, their email client will display the sender's logo next to the email in their inbox, as well as potentially a blue tick (on Gmail). This provides an additional layer of trust for the recipient, who can easily see that the email is from a legitimate sender.
BIMI is a cool way to improve email authentication and increase brand recognition in the inbox. While it does require some additional steps to implement, the potential benefits make it well worth considering for any business that relies on email marketing.
Publishing a self-asserted BIMI record
Yahoo and Fastmail are the two clients that will allow BIMI without a trademark.
By publishing a record with a=URL value (the hosting location of the VMC/Assertion record), you can technically have your logo show up in those two inboxes. But it won’t be present in Gmail or Apple Mail.
The Gmail blue check mark
If you’re here specifically because you want a blue checkmark on Gmail, I can tell you it’s tumultuous times out there! In June of 2023, Google noted security issues that allowed for spammers to bypass authentication and thwart the goal of BIMI. And so now those senders with multiple DKIM signatures may not be able to benefit from the checkmark within Gmail. Source.
Myth busting
BIMI’s role in deliverability
Although this cute blue checkmark and a verified logo certainly will make your emails look nice, it’s no golden ticket to the inbox. Although there are rumors that it will assist with deliverability, it’s worth talking about how it will assist and how it won't assist with deliverability.
Implementing BIMI will at an organizational level, force you to ensure your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all pass. So, if this is the root of your existing deliverability issues, sure, BIMI will help.
But, reaching the inbox of your subscribers is going to be based on a reputation you’ve built. If you are sending emails no one wants to receive, email clients are going to protect their end users (the subscribers) and not pay you or your trademarked logo any mind.
BIMI’s role in increasing engagement
This is a myth I can’t specifically bust. Because in some cases, I’ve seen positive changes from displaying a logo in the inbox of your subscriber. BIMI group in 2019 reported it saw brands have their open rate boosted by 10%. It helps you stand out in the inbox and build trust and relationships. This is fully one of those “it depends” answers. Sorry!
In conclusion, I hope this helps outline BIMI in better detail for those who are curious!