Boost Email Marketing Results with BIMI

Displaying a brand’s logo next to their email marketing messages in recipients’ inboxes can drive more opens and clicks. But soon it could become necessary to show the same logo.

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is an email specification that allows businesses to display a logo along with the subject or sender address of an email message in the inbox of clients such as Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, and others to display.

BIMI specification

The BIMI email standard gives companies control over how their logo is displayed in email clients, while encouraging them to adopt basic deliverability and authentication specifications:

• Sender Policy Framework (SPF),
• Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM),
• Domain-based message authentication, reporting, and compliance (DMARC).

For email clients, the benefits are increased DMARC acceptance by senders—meaning reduced risk of fraud and phishing—and a better user experience.

For businesses, benefits include (i) better email deliverability thanks SPF, DKIM and DMARC(ii) brand presence in the inbox; and (iii) the opportunity for better email marketing engagement.

Email Engagement

Adding a logo next to a subject line in an email inbox could increase email marketing engagement by 10% or more, depending on the survey.

A July 2021 report by Entrust (a payment security provider) and Red Shift (a connectivity company) suggested that the addition of BIMI could boost email open rates by 21%; 18% increase in brand recall; and increase the average purchase probability by an incredible 34%.

Even a 3.4% increase would prompt most marketers to set up BIMI immediately.

A March 2018 Yahoo Mail BIMI test showed a 10% increase in email engagement. Others have reported an increase in open rates of up to 50% with BIMI.

This screenshot shows two eBay logos. The larger one is part of the email message, but the logo on the top left is another example of BIMI in action.

How to implement BIMI

Getting started with BIMI is straightforward.

Make sure SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up for the domain used to send email marketing messages. It’s a requirement. Although DMARC allows three possible policy actions – Quarantine, Deny, and None, BIMI does not always work when set to None.

Create an SVG version of your company logo Based on the World Wide Web Consortium’s SVG Tiny 1.2 standard. The BIMI organization has a conversion tool and an Adobe Illustrator export script to help with logo formatting. The logo must be square, under 32kb and have a solid color background.

Optionally, check your company’s brand logo. BIMI supports Verified Mark certificates from Entrust DataCard and DigiCert, which confirm ownership of trademarks.

Publish the logo on the Internet so any email inbox provider can access it. This is as simple as hosting the image on your company’s website – just like any other image.

Add a DNS text record with specific information about the logo, including its location.

The value for the TXT record should follow the format:

default._bimi.[domain]

For example, the Amazon.com BIMI data set would be:

default._bimi.amazon.com

For subdomains, the TXT record would look like this:

default._bimi.marketing.amazon.com

The DNS text record consists of three parts.

v=BIMI1;
l=https://d3frv9g52qce38.cloudfront.net/amazon_web_services_196911883.svg;
a=https://d3frv9g52qce38.cloudfront.net/amazon_web_services_196911883.pem

The first part of the text record identifies the version of the BIMI specification.

v=BIMI1;

Next, the “l” defines the position of the logo.

l=https://d3frv9g52qce38.cloudfront.net/amazon_web_services_196911883.svg;

If you have trademarked and verified your brand’s logo, the optional “a” parameter can be used to link to the Verified Mark certificates.

a=https://d3frv9g52qce38.cloudfront.net/amazon_web_services_196911883.pem

Once saved, the new DNS TXT record may take several hours to propagate. Then, after propagation, verify it using BIMI inspector. The logo should appear in your recipients’ inboxes soon.

BIMI support

Microsoft doesn’t support BIMI for Outlook, but other email clients do, including:

• apple mail,
• gmail,
• Yahoo Mail,
• fastmail,
• cloud marrow,
• La Poste,
• Zone.

BIMI Advantage

Surprisingly, in 2023, many companies are still not using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to reduce fraud and make improvements Email Deliverability. BIMI could encourage these companies to adopt these standards.

Although BIMI could be a competitive advantage in 2023, its deployment could be widespread. It would be a disadvantage not to implement it.