BIMI (Brand Indicators)
BIMI displays your brand logo next to authenticated emails in supported inboxes. Requires DMARC enforcement plus a Verified Mark Certificate.
BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is the standard that lets mail clients show your brand's logo next to your messages in the inbox. Gmail, Yahoo, Apple Mail, Fastmail support it.
It's a marketing payoff for the email-authentication work you already did. You can't enable BIMI without already having strict DMARC enforcement.
What you need to enable it
- DMARC with policy =
quarantineorreject.p=nonedoesn't qualify. Your DMARC has to actually be enforcing failures. - SVG Tiny PS logo. A specific SVG profile, not regular SVG. Square aspect ratio, transparent background.
- Logo hosted at a public URL. Usually
https://yourdomain.com/bimi/logo.svg. - Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) or Common Mark Certificate (CMC). A specialized cert that ties your trademark or trademark-equivalent registration to the logo. Costs $1,000-$1,500/year from issuers like Entrust or DigiCert. Gmail requires this. Apple Mail accepts CMC (cheaper, no trademark needed).
- DNS TXT record. Published at
default._bimi.yourdomain.com:
default._bimi.yourdomain.com. IN TXT "v=BIMI1; l=https://yourdomain.com/bimi/logo.svg; a=https://yourdomain.com/bimi/vmc.pem"
l= points to the SVG. a= points to the certificate.
Why bother
The data is fuzzy but consistent: a few percentage points of open-rate improvement on authenticated mail, because users recognize the logo faster and trust the message more. Some brands report 10%+ but that's brand-dependent.
The honest answer on ROI: BIMI is more valuable as a forcing function to fix your DMARC enforcement than as a marketing channel in itself. The work to get to p=reject is what protects your brand. The logo is the dessert.
Multi-tenant gotcha
If your SaaS sends mail on behalf of customers from their domain, BIMI works on their domain, not yours. Each customer needs their own VMC, their own logo SVG, their own BIMI record. Most SaaS sender platforms don't support BIMI per-tenant yet because of the certificate cost and admin overhead. If your customers ask, the answer is usually "publish your own BIMI record on your domain, point it at our logo if you want our branding, but the cert and SVG are yours."