What is BIMI

And why do you need BIMI with Managed BIMI?
BIMI Email Inbox

There are more than 4 billion email users globally, and more than 3 million emails are sent every second.
Many of them aren’t even opened, plus the average user deletes nearly half of the emails they receive. People are also more careful when it comes to opening received emails because of the vast and rising amount of phishing emails.

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is an emerging set of technical specifications that provides the ability to solve these problems. BIMI takes care of identifying the content, helps its authors fight against phishing, improves safety, and builds trust and brand identity.

BIMI means more trust from the recipient's side, who feels secure opening verified emails. It’s a step towards a higher security level in communication between users and companies.

What is BIMI

Brand Indicators for Message Identification

BIMI is an email verification parameter that permits the addressee to see the brand logo in the inbox opposite the mailing list. It helps the postal service correctly identify and pass the letter to the client’s inbox.

BIMI is the leading method to prevent logo fraud in emails for phishing and scam use. The primary feature of BIMI is the ability to display your brand logo on your email in recipient inboxes.

Keep reading if you want to know more about BIMI:
BIMI Email Inbox

How BIMI works

How Does BIMI Work?

BIMI works in conjunction with DMARC, DKIM, and SPF to enable recipient email providers to correctly identify your company and allow your messages to appear in the inbox. Technically, BIMI is a DNS (Domain Name System) text entry similar to DMARC.

First, make sure that your domain DMARC policy is set to “reject” or “quarantine”. Your domain should send properly authenticated emails (with SPF and DKIM) so that you can safely enforce the DMARC policy.

What a BIMI record is

What is a BIMI Record?

BIMI allows you to publish a new, standardized DNS record for a domain you own. This record contains a URL to a logo that may require proof that the logo has been validated with a VMC. Here’s how it works:

- An organization publishes a BIMI record containing these URLs.
- A supporting mailbox provider (MBP) checks the sending domain’s DMARC policy and verifies whether it’s included in the BIMI validation.

- If both checks are successful, the MBP may use the logo from the URL in the BIMI record to populate the BIMI image of the qualifying email sent from that domain to the MBP.

What VMC (Verified Mark Certificate) is

What is a VMC?

Similar to Twitter’s “verified user” blue checkmarks, a VMC is an official mark that the domain has the official claim to its brand logo. While Google is currently the only one to enforce Verified Mark Certificates, other email providers are following suit to prevent misuse of a brand logo.
This way, an email recipient can see whether or not you are the authentic owner of the displayed brand before they even open the email. This helps reduce the amount of spam and phishing emails that utilize brand names to appear genuine.
A VMC logo has an added layer of security. Since it’s verified by the official trademark organization, it’s much more difficult to spoof or use for unintended purposes.

What are the BIMI Logo Requirements?

What are the BIMI Logo Requirements?

For BIMI to work, first you need to achieve DMARC enforcement (p=quarantine or p=reject). This way, you protect your brand reputation and ensure nobody is impersonating your domain.

If the DMARC policy for your domain is at an enforcement level (p=quarantine or p=reject), and the record defines a percentage tag, then that tag must be pct=100, otherwise, the policy does not meet BIMI requirements.

What Is a Verified Mark Certificate?

What Is a Verified Mark Certificate?

Similar to Twitter’s “verified user” blue checkmarks, a VMC is an official mark that the domain has the official claim to its brand logo. While Google is currently the only one to enforce Verified Mark Certificates, other email providers are following suit to prevent misuse of a brand logo.

This way, an email recipient can see whether or not you are the authentic owner of the displayed brand before they even open the email. This helps reduce the amount of spam and phishing emails that utilize brand names to appear genuine. A VMC logo has an added layer of security. Since it’s verified by the official trademark organization, it’s much more difficult to spoof or use for unintended purposes.

How to Create a BIMI SVG Logo?

How to Create a BIMI SVG Logo?

Prepare your logo – square, SVG format. The icon will be small. Configure DMARC, DKIM, and SPF if you haven’t done so before. To further configure BIMI, use the p = quarantine or p = reject policy for DMARC.

The p = none policy will not work. Add a BIMI entry. BIMI is a TXT record. Its meaning looks like this: v = BIMI1; l = https://site.logo.SVG
/v – protocol version, l – path to your logo in SVG format/. You can use our BIMI Logo Converter tool to convert your BIMI SVG images and logos to BIMI-compatible SVG Tiny P/S format and then generate the BIMI Record here.

What Providers Support BIMI?

What Providers Support BIMI?

Currently, email clients such as Yahoo!, AOL, and Gmail all support this new feature, with many other email providers planning to do the same soon. Gmail: While it does support BIMI, having VMC is a requirement. Yahoo: Supports BIMI without requiring VMC. Your domain needs to have a certain reputation with their filter engines for your logo to be visible in Yahoo’s mailboxes. Fastmail: Supports BIMI without requiring VMC. Comcast and Seznam.cz: are considering BIMI support soon.

Managed and Automated BIMI
Solution

Manage and monitor BIMI records easily — directly within our platform. You just need to add a single CNAME record to your domain DNS, after which you can securely host the SVG logo and VMC certificate with us.

Simply upload your SVG logo and publish the custom-tailored BIMI record on your DNS. EasyDMARC will take care of hosting your logo and maintaining the server.

You can increase email deliverability, brand impressions, and conversions with EasyDMARC’s automated BIMI Solution.

BIMI Email Inbox

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