Boost your email marketing results with BIMI

Displaying your branded logo next to your branded email marketing message in your recipient’s inbox can help drive opens and clicks. However, it may become necessary to display the same logo in the near future.

BIMI (Brand Indicator for Message Identification) is an email specification that allows companies to display their logo inline with the subject line or sending address of email messages in the inbox of clients such as Gmail, Apple Mail, and Yahoo Mail.

The Yahoo, Amazon, and HP logos are generated from the BIMI email records associated with the sending domain’s DNS records.

BIMI specifications

The BIMI email standard gives companies control over how their logo is displayed in email clients and encourages companies to adopt basic deliverability and authentication specifications.

• Sender Policy Framework (SPF),
• DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM),
• Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC).

The benefit for email clients is increased adoption of DMARC by senders. This means less risk of fraud and phishing, and a better user experience.

For businesses, benefits include (i) improved email delivery with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, (ii) brand exposure in the inbox, and (iii) potential for increased email marketing engagement.

email engagement

Depending on research, adding a logo next to the email inbox subject line can increase email marketing engagement by 10% or more.

A July 2021 report from Entrust (a payment security provider) and Red Shift (a connectivity company) suggested that adding BIMI could increase email open rates by 21%. Improve brand recall by 18%. Increases average purchase likelihood by an incredible 34%.

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

A March 2018 BIMI test by Yahoo Mail showed a 10% increase in email engagement. Others have reported a 50% increase in open rates from BIMI.

This screen capture shows two eBay logos. The larger one is part of an email message, while the top left logo is another example of her BIMI in action.

How BIMI is implemented

Getting started with BIMI is easy.

Make sure SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set For domains used to send email marketing messages. it’s a requirement. Also, DMARC allows three policy actions: Quarantine, Deny, and None, but BIMI doesn’t always work with the None setting.

Create an SVG version of your company logo Based on the World Wide Web Consortium’s SVG Tiny 1.2 standard. The BIMI org has conversion tools and Adobe Illustrator export scripts to help you format your logo. The logo must be square, less than 32 KB, and have a solid background.

Check company trademark logo if neededBIMI supports Verified Mark Certificates from Entrust DataCard and DigiCert to verify trademark ownership.

Publish your logo on the web Allow access for all email inbox providers. This is as easy as hosting the image on his website for your business, just like any other image.

Add DNS txt record Contains specific information about the logo, such as location.

txt record values ​​must follow this format:

default._bimi.[domain]

For example, the BIMI record for Amazon.com looks like this:

default._bimi.amazon.com

For subdomains, the txt record looks like this:

default._bimi.marketing.amazon.com

A DNS text record has 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;

Then the ‘l’ defines the position of the logo.

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

If your brand’s logo is trademarked and verified, you can use the optional ‘a’ parameter to link to your verified mark certificate.

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

Once saved, it may take several hours for the new DNS txt records to propagate. Then, once propagated, use the BIMI inspector to validate. The logo will immediately appear in the recipient’s inbox.

BIMI support

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

• apple mail,
• Gmail,
• yahoo mail,
• fast mail,
• cloudmark,
• La Poste,
• zone.

BIMI Advantage

Surprisingly, in 2023, many businesses still use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to reduce fraud and improve email deliverability. BIMI can encourage these companies to adopt these standards.

BIMI may therefore be a competitive advantage in 2023, but its use may be widespread. If you don’t implement it, you will be at a disadvantage.