BIMI Logo Requirements & Setup

Boost Email Trust & Brand Recognition with BIMI: Get Your BIMI Logo Ready Today

What is BIMI?

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is an email authentication protocol that adds your brand logo to all the emails you send. You may be wondering that as the recipient of the email your email client is already showing brand logos. But what’s important is who is in control of the logos!

Usually, logos are automatically curated by email client vendors, pulling them from various sources. Different logos show up depending on different email clients and devices.

Why the BIMI Logo is Important

With more and more mailbox providers embracing the protocol, BIMI can serve as an excellent marketing tool for organizations around the world. The implementation process gets simplified to a few button clicks when you avail of a hosted service, and the benefits are plenty.

When you use BIMI to attach your unique brand logo to emails that your clients receive from your company, you not only leave a lasting impact but also provide them with a visual indication that you are a trusted source.

How does BIMI work?

BIMI works by attaching a brand’s logo to outgoing emails as a mark of visual verification displayed in the receiver’s inbox. With the BIMI email specification, domain owners and brands are in control of their officially displayed logos, which are maintained consistently in all outgoing emails for supported mailbox providers. The brand’s official logo is the most essential identifying factor of your brand, therefore affixing the logo on every email received by your clients, partners, and employees builds up a sense of trust and assurance.

The BIMI logo on your email message instantly captures the receiver’s attention, makes a strong first impression in email inboxes, is the foundation of your brand’s identity, enhances security, demarcates you from your competitors, and fosters brand loyalty. BIMI logos are not only effective as an email security measure but have also become a feather in the cap of email marketers.

BIMI Logo Requirements

BIMI has certain requirements while uploading your brand logo:

SPF or DKIM setup: You need to set up either SPF or DKIM for your domain. This will prepare the groundwork for your DMARC implementation.
DMARC setup: After this, you need to set up DMARC for your domain with a policy of quarantine or higher (reject). DMARC deployment is mandatory for the BIMI logo display.
The logo must be in SVG format: One crucial BIMI logo requirement is that your logo image must be in SVG format. Scalable Vector Graphics or SVG is a popular format that drives several elements of modern websites and applications. Different from popular bitmap formats like GIF, JPG, and PNG, the vector graphics are made out of lines and curves which can be easily scaled without loss of detail. SVG is comparatively lighter, loads quickly, and adapts easily to responsive sizing.
Image must be square: For BIMI implementation the exact dimensions of the logo do not matter as it is uploaded in SVG format makes it easily scalable. However, the image must be square and the aspect ratio must be 1:1.
The logo must meet the SVG BIMI profile: While the SVG standard is very versatile and has a range of versions to choose from, the closest fit to the SVG BIMI specifications is SVG 1.2 Tiny.

How to Setup BIMI Image?

To implement BIMI, you first need to enforce your existing DMARC policy by setting it to either reject or quarantine.

After successfully enforcing DMARC you can avail of the advantages of BIMI in your organization’s email domain! Similar to any other email authentication standard, BIMI resides in your domain as a text (TXT) record.

The BIMI record(s) resides in the “_bimi” space of your DNS with the default BIMI record being “default._bimi”. The text part holds the identifier of the record version (v=BIMI1), URL to the logo (l=), and URL to the logo certificate (VMC) if available (a=).

A complete BIMI record would look like the following:

default._bimi IN TXT “v=BIMI1;l=https://url.to/your.file.svg;a=https://url.to/certificate.pem”

How to Check Your Bimi Record?

To ensure that your BIMI record is functioning properly, check it now using our BIMI record lookup tool, it’s free! All you need to do is:

Enter your domain name in the designated box
Click on Lookup
View your results to see whether your record has any errors
Take action against misconfigured records faster

Do You Need DMARC?

We have already discussed what is BIMI and why you need it. But do you need DMARC too? Yes! Your domain needs to have DMARC deployed with a policy of p = quarantine or reject, with both SPF and DKIM enabled.

You have to develop a good reputation as a sender for email receiving servers to see you as a trusted source. This means following email best practices and deliverability guidelines. Your track record determines whether or not the email receiver will display your BIMI-based brand logo. There’s no time to waste, you better get started!

What Does PowerDMARC Do Differently?

At PowerDMARC, we believe not just in doing something unique, but doing it better. Here’s what we mean:

Free Hosted BIMI
When you sign up for a DMARC deployment with PowerDMARC, you’re also getting hosted BIMI implementation on the house. Building your brand literally couldn’t get easier.
One-Click Implementation
With PowerBIMI, getting your very own SVG-compliant logo isn’t just easy, it’s fast. Just upload your logo image, click one button, and boom. You’re done. You can leave the rest to us.

BIMI is one of the newest email verification standards out there. The quicker you act, the easier it will be to build your brand image. Sign up for a free BIMI now and get your own BIMI Record configured!

Get Started with PowerDMARC today to unlock all of the latest BIMI features!

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