BIMI

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is an email standard that lets mailbox providers display a verified brand logo next to messages from a given domain. It is supported by Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Apple Mail and others. The logo cannot simply be bought and switched on — it is a reward for correctly authenticating your outbound email, which is why BIMI is considered the final step of an email security rollout.

How BIMI works

The prerequisite is working authentication: SPF and DKIM records plus a DMARC policy set to an enforcement mode — quarantine or reject; a policy of none is not enough. The domain owner then publishes a DNS TXT record at default._bimi.yourdomain pointing to the logo file in SVG Tiny PS format, a restricted and safe SVG profile. Some providers, notably Gmail, additionally require a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) or Common Mark Certificate (CMC), issued by a certificate authority after validating rights to the mark. When an incoming message passes DMARC evaluation, the receiving server fetches the logo referenced in the BIMI record and renders it beside the sender's name.

Practical applications

BIMI is most valuable for brands sending email at scale: online stores, banks, SaaS products and newsletter publishers. A recognizable logo in the inbox builds trust, can lift open rates and raises the bar for phishing — a spoofed message that fails DMARC never gets the logo. A typical rollout proceeds step by step: configure SPF and DKIM, move DMARC from monitoring to enforcement, prepare the SVG Tiny PS logo, publish the BIMI record and, if targeting Gmail, obtain a VMC. All of it requires nothing more than access to the domain's DNS zone, so it can be done with any registrar or hosting provider.