What is BIMI and How to Set it Up

The email marketing landscape is fast-changing. As email sending volumes continue to grow, marketers are expected to face more email deliverability challenges. companies are always searching for new ways to get their message opened, improve visibility, and increase trust. 

In response, email services are going the extra mile to improve deliverability, enhance user experience, and add an extra layer of security. This is where BIMI comes in! BIMI is an emerging email standard that offers an improved user experience and an extra layer of security. 

A study done by Red Sift revealed that BIMI resulted in a 90% boost in consumer confidence in sender legitimacy. This new email standard is probably the next big thing in the world of email marketing.

What is BIMI?

BIMI stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. It’s an email standard that enables the display of a brand’s logo next to their message in email inboxes. This innovative email specification offers authenticated senders the ability to represent their brands effectively in messaging services.

BIMI is highly beneficial. It enables email marketers to build a strong brand image by placing their logos next to email messages. This one-of-a-kind approach creates a visual connection and brand recognition that’s instrumental to improving deliverability and conversion.

It also serves as a security feature. The logo displayed alongside email messages helps subscribers to ensure the emails they’re opening are not from impostors. In a nutshell, BIMI is the email standard of choice if you’re looking to reinforce brand credibility and improve deliverability.

How Does BIMI Work?

To implement BIMI, you’ve to create and publish a new DNS record that contains your BIMI record. When a BIMI-supporting email service provider receives an email, it evaluates it using some validation protocols. After authentication, the provider will do a DNS lookup in search of a BIMI record. 

Your BIMI record consists of the link to your logo and other technical information. The email service provider will display your brand’s logo if the BIMI record is valid. BIMI works based on some authentication processes, including:

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

You may require a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) to be BIMI-compliant. The VMC is what validates that the logo’s trademark is truly owned by your company. Even though this requirement is optional (although some mailbox providers may require it), VMC could improve deliverability.

Why Do You Need BIMI?

Having covered what BIMI is and how it works, let’s take a quick look at why you need it. Here’re the major benefits of setting up BIMI:

1. Security

To implement BIMI, you are required to adopt protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These are protocols built to boost security and deliverability. With your brand’s logo being displayed alongside your messages, impostors will find it extremely difficult to deceive your subscribers. 

2.  Make Your Message Stand Out

Having your logo displayed alongside your message improves brand recognition. And that’s what you need to stand out from the crowd. In a fiercely competitive business landscape, doing things differently is the way to go if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

3. Earn Subscriber Trust

Given the impact of spoofing and phishing attacks on the cybersecurity landscape, subscriber trust is low. This affects how users respond to brand messages. With BIMI, you can offer your subscribers amazing experiences and confidence in your email campaigns.

4. Increase Deliverability Rates

Implementing BIMI sends a positive signal to email service providers that your emails are authentic and trustworthy. As a result, you’ve got a higher chance of boosting deliverability. 

5. Boost Open Rates

It helps you to build trust that translates to higher open rates over time. Having your logo displayed next to your messages offers your brand the recognition it needs to win subscribers' attention. A study done during the BIMI beta program for Yahoo! Mail recorded an average of 10% boost in open rates.

How to Set Up BIMI?

Next, you’ll learn the step-by-step process involved in setting up BIMI. It works only with compliant mailbox providers. BIMI-supporting email services include AOL, Google, and Yahoo! That said, here’s how to set up BIMI:

Step 1: DMARC Compliance

The first step is to ensure full DMARC compliance, which makes sure sure SPF and/or DKIM for all mail are aligned and authenticated with your from-domain. 

Step 2: Create a BIMI-Complaint Logo

Create a brand logo that is compliant with BIMI’s specifications. Here’re the basic requirements:

• Square dimensions
• SVG filesize no more than 32KB 
• Non-transparent background
• Solid is recommended

Next, format your logo to be BIMI-compliant. The image must be in SVG Tiny P/S format. There are conversion tools to help you get this done, but we found them difficult to use. After checking out this article for the full specifications for the image format, we found the simplest way to create a compliant file was like this.

Use Adobe Illustrator to "Save as..." an SVG and select the "SVG Tiny 1.2" profile

Open the SVG file in a text editor and make the following changes

• edit the profile name
• remove the x / y positioning
• remove the overflow attribute if present
• convert any CSS styling into XML attributes

<svg version="1.2" baseProfile="tiny" id="Layer_1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
     x="0px" y="0px" viewBox="0 0 425.2 425.2" overflow="visible" xml:space="preserve">
<g>

<svg version="1.2" baseProfile="tiny-ps" id="Layer_1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
     viewBox="0 0 425.2 425.2" xml:space="preserve">
<title>InboxAlly</title>
<g>

<stop  offset="1" style="stop-color:#EF4523"/>

<stop  offset="1" stop-color="#EF4523"/>

Step 3: Get a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC)

Not every provider requires VMC for BIMI to work. However, this may change in the future. More mailbox providers may start making it mandatory over time. To get a VMC, your logo must be trademarked by the relevant authority. 

After verifying that the image belongs to you, you can proceed to buy a VMC via a certified authority, such as Entrust or Digicert.

Step 4: Publish a BIMI Record in DNS

After creating a BIMI-compliant logo, go to your domain’s DNS records to publish a BIMI record. Insert a new TXT record in the default._bimi subdomain. This includes the BIMI version and where your logo is located (make sure the URL is HTTPS). Save the new record and you’re good to go!

default._bimi.[domain] IN TXT “v=BIMI1; l=[SVG URL]; a=[PEM URL];"

If this is too technical for you, you can quickly and effectively set things up using this BIMI generator and click "Generate BIMI" to help you produce a valid record.

As an example the BIMI record for inboxally is as follows:

v=BIMI1; l=https://assets.inboxally.com/images/ia-logo-bimi.svg; a=;

Step 5: Check to Ensure Your BIMI is Properly Set Up

As soon as your record is published, double check the SVG image, DMARC, and other requirements using the BIMI Inspector to look up your domain and check if BIMI is set up properly. You will see alert icons about all potential issues. After setting things up, you’ll need to give it about 24 hours to propagate and see the logo appear in the inboxes.

What to expect with BIMI

BIMI enables you to stay ahead of the curve by enhancing your brand recognition & reputation, offering more security, and enabling a better subscriber experience. It’s harder to stand out in the inbox than ever before so we recommend investing the effort to gain that extra credibility.