BIMI Logo Requirements & Setup
Boost Email Trust & Brand Recognition with BIMI: Get Your BIMI Logo Ready Today
Boost Email Trust & Brand Recognition with BIMI: Get Your BIMI Logo Ready Today
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.
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.
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 has certain requirements while uploading your brand logo:
For preparing a BIMI-compliant logo, the most commonly used tool is Adobe Illustrator:
To prepare your SVG correctly, all you need to do is:
Alternatively, you can instantly convert your BIMI logo into SVG Tiny 1.2, with our automated BIMI SVG Logo Converter.
According to the BIMI group, major mailbox providers that currently support BIMI logo display are Google, Yahoo, Apple Mail (iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura 13 or later, and iCloud.com), Cloudmark, Fastmail, La Poste, Onet Poczta, and Zone, while a much wider adoption can be expected in the upcoming years.
It is purely human nature to rely on things that can be visually verified. BIMI sets itself apart from typical email authentication protocols like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC by allowing email senders to display their brand logos as a mark of visual verification that can have the following benefits:
To get started with BIMI and set up your BIMI image follow these steps:
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”
One of the most common reasons for your BIMI logo to not display as expected is if your receiver’s mailbox provider doesn’t support the protocol. For example, if they are using MS O365, your BIMI logo wouldn’t display since Microsoft currently doesn’t support the display of brand logos.
Suppose your receiver depends on Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, or Fastmail for your email exchanges. In that case, your logo will be displayed if you have configured the protocol and hosted your SVG logo properly, abiding by the BIMI logo specifications.
You can consider using our free BIMI SVG logo converter or a logo maker tool to create a BIMI-compliant logo that meets all necessary specifications, ensuring that it will display correctly.
Gmail has made Verified Mark Certificates a compulsory additive for the sender while publishing their BIMI record. VMC is optional for some of the supporting mailbox providers, however, it is statutory for Gmail users, otherwise, the sender’s logo wouldn’t display.
You can buy your certificate by getting in touch with a trusted mark certification authority. Upload the certificate along with your BIMI-compliant logo to get your logo displayed in Gmail inboxes!
An enforced DMARC policy of either p=reject or p=quarantine is absolutely mandatory for configuring BIMI. This is why even though BIMI isn’t directly a security protocol it is considered to be a great ally that extends support towards the enforcement and adoption of email authentication protocols like DMARC.
Sign up for a DMARC analyzer at your organization to safely shift to an enforced policy faster, without affecting your email deliverability.
Lastly, another very common reason why your logo is not showing up in your receivers’ inboxes is that there are errors in your BIMI record. These errors can range from syntax errors in your TXT record to your logo size or format not being BIMI-compliant.
It is recommended that before jumping onto publishing your record, be sure to read the BIMI logo specifications in detail to make sure you have a proper and clear understanding of the requirements. For an error-free record, you can also use a BIMI record generator tool to instantly generate your BIMI record without the fear of going wrong!
Note that whatever might be the case, ultimately the display of your brand’s logo is totally dependent on the receiver.
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:
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!
At PowerDMARC, we believe not just in doing something unique, but doing it better. Here’s what we mean:
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!