The Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is a relatively new and rapidly evolving standard that allows brands to display their logos in customers' inboxes. 

What is BIMI? It’s a technology that complements digital signatures such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Only emails that pass these authentication checks are eligible to display the brand's logo, making it essential for businesses to have these protocols correctly configured. 

By ensuring that emails are authenticated, BIMI adds an extra layer of security to email communication, helping prevent phishing, spoofing, and other fraudulent activities. BIMI also serves as a visual trust signal, reassuring recipients that the email comes from a verified and trustworthy sender.

Beyond improving security, BMI enhances brand visibility. Displaying your logo directly in the inbox allows you to stand out from the competition, making your emails more recognizable and engaging. In fact, implementing BIMI has been shown to improve email deliverability and increase open rates, as it builds trust with email providers and subscribers alike.

Let’s take a closer look at the whole process.

Steps to Implement BIMI

Starting with BIMI involves several key steps for your brand's logo to appear next to your emails in recipients' inboxes. 

Configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

To be eligible for BIMI, your email domain must pass authentication protocols:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Ensures that the email comes from an authorized server by specifying which servers are permitted to send emails from your domain.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to your emails, verifying that the message was not altered during transit.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Enforces policies for how your email is handled by the receiving server, helping to protect your domain from being used in phishing or spoofing attacks.

Ensure that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are properly set up and that DMARC is set to either "quarantine" or "reject" mode for BIMI to function.

Create an SVG Version of Your Logo

BIMI requires your logo to be in SVG format (Scalable Vector Graphics) to ensure it displays correctly across various devices and email clients. 

Obtain a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC)

A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) is required to authenticate your logo with BIMI. The VMC acts as a digital certificate proving that your logo has been officially verified. This certificate is obtained from a trusted certification authority (CA). VMCs can add credibility and trust to your brand by ensuring that only verified logos appear next to emails.

Publish BIMI DNS Record

Once your logo is ready and you’ve obtained a VMC, you need to publish a BIMI DNS record. This record includes the URL of your SVG logo and verifies its legitimacy. The DNS record should point to the location where your logo is hosted and include your VMC credentials.

Test Your Setup

After configuring BIMI, test your email deliverability and logo display across different email clients and devices. It’s essential to ensure that the logo appears correctly and consistently across platforms.

By following these steps, you can successfully implement BIMI, boosting both the security of your emails and the visibility of your brand in your recipients' inboxes.

Creating Brand Logo SVG File

Logo requirements look like this:

• The logo must be square with a 1:1 aspect ratio. Since the logo in the mailbox can be placed in various shapes like circles or squares, the image should be centered.
• The logo must be in SVG 1.2 Tiny format.
• The file size must not exceed 32 KB.
• The logo must not contain text.

Creating an SVG logo in Adobe Illustrator

1. If the logo is created from an image, you can select an element and click Image Trace in the Object tab to convert it to vector graphics. You can also use a logo generator to generate a vector logo for you. 

If the quality of the image has suffered, then first undo the action (Edit tab → Undo Scale).

Next, in the Window tab, select the Image Trace item.

Here you will find settings to improve the quality of a vector element.

2. If the logo contains text, then it must be removed, as it isn’t supported by BIMI. Select the text layer and in the Type menu click Create Outlines. The text is now displayed as "Group".

3. Select all the objects and then go to Object → Ungroup. You should repeat this step until all items are ungrouped.

Exporting the SVG file

1. To conform to the BIMI specification, the logo must be square. Create a new 1:1 file in the current file with RGB color mode.

2. Copy all the elements of the original file and paste them into the new one.

3. Then click Save As..., and select the SVG format in the Save as type:.

4. Select SVG Tiny 1.2 in the SVG Profiles from the drop-down list.

Converting the file to SVG P/S

Check out converting SVG Tiny 1.2 file to SVG P/S format in source code. You can use the following tools:

• Standalone GUI Tool for Windows 10;
• Standalone GUI Tool for macOS;
• Atom;
• CodePen;
• Nano;
• Sublime Text;
• Vim;
• Visual Studio Code;
• Adobe Illustrator – a tool for creating, converting, and saving SVG files.

The first two tools automatically convert files, while the rest is for manual editing.

If you created a file from scratch, then the easiest way to edit code is right there, in Adobe Illustrator, by clicking on the SVG Code button.

If you have only a ready-made SVG logo, then it will be easier to install and use one of the other services. Let's consider an example to make the roadmap clear.

Converting a file in the Sublime Text editor

By clicking on the SVG logo file, it will open in Sublime Text. In the XML code, you need to:

• Remove x/y attributes: clean out x=“0px” and y=“0px” in the code.

• Change baseProfile=“tiny” to baseProfile=“tiny-ps” in line 3.

• Remove all style tags and attributes.

• The version attribute has a value “1.2”.

• Add the line <title>YourCompany</title>. This can be your company name, with a maximum of 64 characters.

Also, note that the logo XML file should not contain any external links, animations, or other interactive elements.

The result should be the following XML:

Placing the Logo in DNS

Now you can proceed to the final step: place the picture on your hosting. Go to the admin panel where you registered the domain, set up digital signatures, and add in the Value field:

• v – protocol version,

• l – path to your SVG logo.

Note that the DMARC policy must contain a rule with the value p=quarantine or p=reject to display the BIMI logo.

With SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up, your domain is now ready. Let’s move on to how it can benefit your email strategy.

Benefits of Implementing BIMI

BIMI offers several valuable benefits for businesses that use email as a key communication tool:

Enhanced Brand Visibility

BIMI allows your logo to appear directly in recipients' inboxes, giving your brand instant recognition. This visual presence not only helps your email stand out but also reinforces your brand identity every time your emails are opened. This is particularly useful in crowded inboxes where multiple promotional emails compete for attention.

Increased Trust and Credibility

By associating your verified logo with your email, BIMI builds trust with both email recipients and providers. The logo acts as a signal of authenticity, confirming that the email is truly from your brand. This helps reduce the likelihood of phishing attacks and increases recipient confidence in your emails.

Improved Email Deliverability

Email service providers prioritize authenticated emails, and BIMI adds another layer of security by confirming the sender’s authenticity. This means emails that use BIMI are more likely to reach the inbox instead of being filtered into spam folders. Consequently, your deliverability rates can see a significant improvement.

Higher Open Rates

Studies show that emails with BIMI logos tend to have higher open rates. The visual cue of a recognized brand logo encourages recipients to open emails, especially when compared to plain-text subject lines or emails from unknown senders. This immediate brand recognition makes recipients more likely to trust and engage with the email.

Protection Against Phishing and Spoofing

BIMI works alongside DMARC to protect against phishing and spoofing. Since only authenticated emails can display the brand logo, unauthorized senders are less likely to impersonate your brand, reducing the risk of phishing attacks.

Strengthened Customer Relationships

By consistently delivering secure, branded emails, you foster greater loyalty and trust among your customers. BIMI helps ensure that your brand appears professional and trustworthy, contributing to long-term customer relationships built on security and reliability.

How to Identify and Fix Errors

1. If you have already added the logo

You can check the correctness of displaying the logo on domain-checker.valimail.com or bimigroup.org/bimi-generator.

To do this, enter your domain name in the search bar. Here you can check:

• digital signature settings,

• BIMI logo,

• displaying the logo in light and dark mode,

• availability of Verified Mark Certificate (VMC).

2. If you are just planning to add a BIMI logo

You can pre-generate BIMI on bimigroup.org/bimi-generator/:

1. Click on the Generate BIMI button.
2. In the block that opens, specify the domain name.
3. Download the generated SVG logo file.
4. Click on the Generate BIMI Record button.

If there are errors in the BIMI record, you’ll see the full list and hints on how to fix them.

If there are no errors and everything is done correctly, the following notification will be displayed: “BIMI record generated successfully!!!✔️”

3. If nothing helped

If you are sure that everything is configured correctly and your certificate is accepted, but the logo is still not displayed, contact Verizon Media support.

Ready! Now your subscribers will see your logo in their Inboxes in AOL, Verizon, Yahoo, and Gmail.