You know private email account issues all too well. Day after day, a mixed bag of newsletters, notifications, order confirmations and bills endlessly pile up. At first glance, most subject lines look pretty similar. To garner the attention of recipients amid this flood of emails while differentiating themselves clearly from untrustworthy senders has become a serious challenge for companies. Short for Brand Indicators for Message Identification, BIMI now offers senders some support in this daily struggle.
Display your own brand logo alongside your sender name
Once set up, an email client or webmail account will display the sender’s company or brand logo right next to the sender name for BIMI-certified messages. The authenticity of an email could hardly be faster to verify or more clearly visible. This is especially helpful for companies sending out marketing campaigns or transactional messages.
BIMI is a relatively new and open standard – developed and supported by some of the world’s largest mailbox providers (including Verizon, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google). It is based on existing authentication standards such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. If these have already been implemented, BIMI can be activated with comparatively little effort (see below). There are no licensing costs or special certification required for BIMI.
Good sender reputation for yourself, a sense of security for your recipients
In this way, companies sending emails can make it much easier for their customers and other communication partners to discern message authenticity. Ideally, this ensures fewer complaints and confusion due to phishing emails, ultimately having a positive impact on the reputation of your brand.
At the same time, BIMI allows companies to naturally enjoy added marketing benefits due to the increased circulation of their logos. This means increased brand recognition courtesy of the “free advertising space” they occupy in thousands of inboxes.
Just a few steps to your own BIMI logo
To use BIMI to display your company’s logo with leading email providers, simply follow these steps:
- Please note: Recipients will only see the logo if the sender has set “p=quarantine” or “p=reject” in the DMARC-DNS record of the respective domain, i.e. when filtering measures can take effect during phishing attempts.
- The chosen logo needs to be stored as a square graphic image, free of text, in SVG Tiny PS format at a freely accessible web address.
- Add a TXT record within the DNS record for the relevant “From:” address:
default._bimi.[domain] IN TXT “v=BIMI1; l=[SVG URL]; a=[PEM URL]
You can find other useful tips for achieving the best possible sender reputation in our Deliverability Guide or feel free to get in touch with our Retarus experts at any time.
