BIMI logo: How to show your brand logo in your emails

According to statistics, only 3 out of 10 marketing emails are opened. So how can we draw attention to our email?
Basically, it is the recipient who decides to open your email or not, according to these three factors: the subject line, the from name, and the pre-header text.
But there is another important factor called BIMI.

A BIMI logo is like a special picture or symbol that shows up next to your email in someone's inbox. It's like putting your company's logo on your emails so people can quickly see it's from you. This helps your emails stand out and makes people more likely to trust and open them.

A brand logo, particularly in the context of BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification), becomes a key element primarily in marketing and promotional emails. Here's why:

In marketing emails, it's crucial for recipients to instantly recognize and trust the sender. A brand logo, validated through BIMI, assures recipients that the email is legitimate and from a known source, reducing the likelihood of it being perceived as spam or phishing.

A recognizable brand logo can significantly increase the chances of an email being opened. In a crowded inbox, where users quickly scan through numerous emails, a familiar logo can grab attention and prompt them to open the email.

For promotional emails, maintaining a consistent brand image across all platforms is essential. Displaying the logo in the inbox ensures that the brand is consistently represented, reinforcing brand identity.

For businesses sending transactional emails like order confirmations, invoices, or notifications, including a BIMI-verified logo adds credibility and professionalism, reassuring customers about the authenticity of the communication.

Whenever you dispatch a marketing email using your brand's email address, email providers like Gmail or Yahoo engage in a verification process to ensure the email's authenticity.

What's the reason? They aim to shield their users from deceptive emails sent by malign actors pretending to be your brand.

This verification involves scrutinizing your DNS record, which is packed with details that authenticate whether the email originated from your company and not an impostor.

Enter BIMI: With this standard, you have the option to embed a URL in your DNS record that links to your brand's logo.

Consequently, during the authentication phase, the email provider stumbles upon this link and positions your logo next to your email in the inbox.

Sounds straightforward, doesn't it?

Yet, there's a catch: certain email services demand an extra step of security before they agree to showcase your logo.

This step is acquiring a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC), a document that certifies your legal ownership of the logo.

To secure a VMC, your logo should be officially registered as a trademark.

Once that's established, you can acquire a certificate from either DigiCert or Entrust Datacard, recognized BIMI certification authorities, at a cost near $1,500 annually.

While VMCs aren't a mandatory requirement for all just yet, a significant number of email providers insist on them for displaying your BIMI logo. It's plausible that VMCs might become a standard requisite in the foreseeable future.

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is supported by several major inbox providers, but the landscape is always evolving. Here are some of the notable inbox providers that had announced support for BIMI:

Setting up Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) involves a few technical steps. Here's a simplified guide to help you through the process:

Kickstarting your BIMI setup? First up, get your domain legit with ESPs. How? Just hook up DKIM and DMARC – it's a breeze and totally amps up your email game.

Before setting up DMARC, make sure you have SPF and DKIM records already published in your DNS. DMARC relies on these email authentication methods.

DMARC is a TXT record in your DNS that tells email receivers how to handle messages from your domain that don't pass SPF and DKM checks.

The basic format of a DMARC record is: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=این آدرس ایمیل توسط spambots حفاظت می شود. برای دیدن شما نیاز به جاوا اسکریپت دارید

v=DMARC1 specifies the DMARC version.

p=none is the policy. Other options include quarantine (treat mail that fails the DMARC check with suspicion) and reject (block mail that fails). Start with none for monitoring purposes without affecting your email flow.

rua=این آدرس ایمیل توسط spambots حفاظت می شود. برای دیدن شما نیاز به جاوا اسکریپت دارید is where aggregate reports are sent. Replace این آدرس ایمیل توسط spambots حفاظت می شود. برای دیدن شما نیاز به جاوا اسکریپت دارید with the email address where you want to receive reports.

Access your domain's DNS management console. Create a new TXT record with the name _dmarc.yourdomain.com. Replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name and enter your DMARC record in the value field.

Once your DMARC record is published, you will start receiving reports to the email specified in the rua tag. Begin with a policy of p=none to collect data and ensure that legitimate emails are not being wrongly rejected. Gradually move to a more restrictive policy (quarantine or reject) as you become confident that your legitimate emails are passing SPF and DKIM checks consistently.

To craft your BIMI logo, start with a streamlined SVG version of your official logo. The goal here is clear: showcase your brand's identity to email recipients.

This means your logo needs to be a finely-tuned, compact image, optimized for clarity and impact across a variety of devices.

This concise and efficient design ensures your logo makes a striking impression in every inbox.

• Square Aspect Ratio: Your logo should be in a square format. This is important because the BIMI standard requires a square to ensure consistent and uniform display across various email platforms. A square aspect ratio guarantees that your logo will be displayed correctly, regardless of the email client.

• Solid Background Color: It's recommended to use a solid background color rather than a transparent background. This ensures better visibility and consistency in display across different email clients, some of which might not render transparent backgrounds effectively.

• Simplicity in Design: The design of the logo should be simple and clear. Since it will be displayed at a small size in email clients, overly complex or detailed logos may not be easily recognizable. A simple, bold design ensures that the logo is immediately identifiable, even when scaled down.

• Centered Logo Placement: The logo should be centered within the square canvas. This is because some email clients may display the logo within a circle or a rounded square. Centering the logo ensures that no critical parts of the design are cropped out or obscured in such cases.

After crafting your SVG logo, it's time to modify it for BIMI compatibility, which is a bit more complex as it involves tweaking the XML code.

Here’s a streamlined process:

1. Open your SVG file with a basic text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). Avoid using Microsoft Word as it's not suitable for this task.

2. In the editor, make these changes:

   Change the “baseProfile” attribute to “tiny-ps”.

   Update the “version” attribute to “1.2”.

3. Insert a <title> element that represents your brand, like “aweber-brandmark”. Eliminate any “x=” or “y=” attributes in the <svg> root element.

4. Save your updated file and upload it to a server that’s publicly accessible. This step is crucial for email providers to retrieve and display your logo.

This step is optional. For some email providers (like Gmail), you'll need a Verified Mark Certificate, which is a digital certificate that verifies the authenticity of your logo. The VMC is issued by a third-party certificate authority. Not all email providers require a VMC, but having one can enhance your BIMI implementation.

Adding your BIMI record to your DNS (Domain Name System) is a crucial step in enabling your brand logo to appear in supported email clients. Here's a concise guide to do it:

Your BIMI record is a TXT record that points to the location of your SVG logo file. It should follow this format:

• v=BIMI1 specifies the BIMI version.

• l= is the location of your SVG logo.

• a= is an optional field for the location of your Verified Mark Certificate (VMC), if you have one.

Then log into the control panel of your domain registrar or DNS hosting service and Look for the DNS settings or DNS management section.

Here you can create a new TXT record. In the host field, enter _bimi.yourdomain.com, replacing yourdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Then In the value field, paste your prepared BIMI record. After entering the details, save your new TXT record. Changes to DNS records can take some time to propagate, typically up to 48 hours.

Once your DNS changes have propagated, use a BIMI lookup tool to verify that your BIMI record is correctly implemented. This step ensures that supported email clients can retrieve and display your logo next to your emails.

Once your DMARC record is published, you will start receiving reports to the email specified in the rua tag.

These reports provide insights into your email traffic, showing which emails are passing or failing SPF and DKIM checks, and how receiving servers are handling these emails based on your DMARC policy.

In light of the new authentication and DMARC policies introduced by Yahoo and Gmail, many of you have already navigated the majority of the BIMI implementation journey.

The question now is whether to proceed and complete the remaining steps to enable your BIMI logo to appear in recipients' inboxes.

The decision ultimately rests with you.

For smaller email senders, the investment might not seem worthwhile, particularly since prominent email providers like Gmail and Fastmail mandate a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC), which incurs an annual cost of several hundred dollars.

However, for those who have a sizable enough audience to warrant the expense and are looking to make their emails more noticeable amidst a crowded inbox, adopting BIMI presents a compelling option.