Next-level email: What is BIMI and why you need it

Are you looking for something to boost your brand visibility in the inbox?

Are you looking to get in early on a future staple of email marketing?

As email continues to be a leader in marketing channels, it can become a real struggle to stay top of mind and top of inbox with your subscribers.

Thankfully, BIMI has come along to provide all of that plus a bit more.

What is BIMI?

BIMI stands for “Brand Indicators for Message Identification.”

To laymen, BIMI is a feature that shows your logo next to your marketing emails in the inbox. That’s right, not just in the email content but in the mailbox even BEFORE subscribers open your email. It takes brand visibility in email to a whole new level.

And the adoption of this feature is still fairly low.

On top of this, BIMI works in conjunction with other security features so that it helps identify and protect against certain types of spoofing of your brand’s email content.

With BIMI in place, you get better inbox visibility, better domain security, and an overall better subscriber experience.

Who is BIMI best for?

Currently, B2C marketers and B2B senders who have a strong presence of Apple Mail users have the most to gain from setting up BIMI. This is because, as the below image from BIMI Group shows, the providers currently supporting it are mostly serving consumers:

That said, it is easy to see that it is only a matter of time before other providers catch up and BIMI becomes a mainstream feature for the rest of the email industry.

Why should BIMI be a priority for your team right now?

If you're still on the fence about it, let me really make the case for you. (If not, you can skip to the next section to know how to set it up)

Why BIMI should be at the top of your implementation list:

1. More logo visibility

2. Early-in on a marketing differentiator

3. Your IT team is already primed for further marketing-related DNS updates (thanks, Yahoogle changes)

4. Stronger security for your brand and customer experience

5. Strong deliverability consistency for your email traffic

How can you set up BIMI?

Here are the core pieces you need in place to activate BIMI with your sending domain:

1. Make sure all traffic is DMARC aligned with your sending domain

   1. DKIM and SPF should be set up for your mail streams on your domain

   2. A DMARC record should be set up on your domain as well

   3. The DMARC record will need to include an enforcement policy at 100% (either p=reject or p=quarantine)

2. Make sure your logo is copyrighted and you have it available in the SVG formatting

   1. You can reference this conversion resource if your organization does not already have an SVG format of your logo

3. Publish the proper BIMI DNS record for mailbox providers to reference

   1. The DNS syntax would be “default._bimi.[domain] IN TXT “v=BIMI1; l=[SVG URL]; a=[PEM URL]” (“a=” piece is optional)

   2. You can use this inspector tool to make sure it is formatted correctly, as well as help you properly generate the TXT record

4. Optional: Some mailbox providers require a VMC on your logo as well

   1. Apple and Google are some of the more prominent that require this

   2. At this time, VMCs are being issued by two organizations:

      1. Entrust DataCard

      2. DigiCert

5. Follow deliverability best practices to maintain strong reputation

   1. Poor reputation can cause mailbox providers to stop elevating the BIMI logo 

Taking a step toward your future

BIMI is just one of many new changes in email marketing that are meant to improve both the sender and receiver’s experience. Email marketers who want to get the most out of this channel will want to keep a close eye on the changes and get in early.

By setting up BIMI, your email marketing efforts will benefit from what it takes to stay cutting edge, and your subscribers will love the results of it as well.