Summary
Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) aims to enhance email trust and engagement by displaying a brand's verified logo next to their emails in supporting inboxes. While not directly influencing email deliverability, BIMI's visual authentication can significantly affect how recipients perceive and interact with your messages. Its core value proposition lies in building immediate brand recognition and fostering a sense of security before an email is even opened.
Key findings
- Enhanced visibility: BIMI places your brand logo prominently in the inbox, making your emails stand out among others and increasing brand recognition.
- Increased trust: The verified logo serves as a visual cue of legitimacy, assuring recipients that the email is genuinely from your brand and not a phishing attempt.
- Potential engagement boost: Some reports indicate a notable increase in open rates and click-through rates (CTR) for emails with a displayed BIMI logo.
- Indirect deliverability benefits: While not a direct deliverability factor, the increased engagement and trust fostered by BIMI can positively influence your sending reputation over time. Consistent positive engagement signals to mailbox providers that your emails are valued by recipients.
Key considerations
- Prerequisites: BIMI requires strong email authentication, specifically a DMARC policy set to 'quarantine' or 'reject', along with properly configured SPF and DKIM. Learn more in our guide to DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
- Verified mark certificate (VMC): For most major inbox providers, a VMC from an accredited certificate authority is necessary to display your logo. You can find more details in our guide on BIMI accredited certificate providers.
- Metric clarity: When evaluating the impact of BIMI, it's crucial to distinguish between relative and absolute percentage increases in engagement metrics (e.g., is a 5% boost from 10% to 15% or to 10.5%?).
- Varied support: While major email clients like Gmail and Yahoo support BIMI, not all mailbox providers display the logo, meaning the impact on engagement may vary across your audience. Dotdigital provides an overview of BIMI's benefits.
What email marketers say
Email marketers widely discuss BIMI's potential to boost engagement metrics, primarily through increased brand visibility and recipient trust. While some report tangible gains in open and click rates, others note that the impact can be modest or require careful metric interpretation. The general sentiment is that BIMI is a valuable addition to an email marketing strategy, contributing to a more professional and trustworthy sender appearance, which can ultimately lead to better performance.
Key opinions
- Positive engagement: Many marketers report seeing increased engagement, often attributing it to the immediate brand recognition and trust conveyed by the logo.
- Brand visibility: BIMI is praised for making emails stand out in crowded inboxes, helping brands cut through the noise.
- Trust and security: The verified logo builds recipient confidence, potentially reducing instances of emails being marked as spam or ignored due to security concerns. This is part of a broader strategy to fix email going to spam.
- Varied results: Some marketers observe minimal or no change in CTR, highlighting that the impact can depend on various factors including industry, audience, and overall email program health.
Key considerations
- Metric interpretation: It is vital to analyze engagement metrics carefully, understanding if reported 'boosts' are absolute increases or relative to existing rates, to gauge true impact.
- Holistic strategy: BIMI is one component of a strong email program. Its benefits are amplified when combined with other best practices, such as increasing email click-through rates through compelling content and relevant offers.
- Implementation effort: While beneficial, implementing BIMI (including DMARC and VMC) requires a technical setup that some marketers might find challenging without expert guidance. Learn more about why you need BIMI.
Marketer from Email Geeks observes clients are seeing a 4%-9% engagement boost when implementing BIMI, attributing this increase to the presence of the brand logo.
Marketer from Email Geeks advises clarifying engagement boost percentages, distinguishing between absolute and relative increases to understand the true impact of BIMI.
What the experts say
Email deliverability experts highlight that while BIMI itself is not a direct deliverability protocol, its integration with robust email authentication (DMARC, SPF, DKIM) reinforces sender legitimacy. This in turn, fosters greater recipient trust. They often emphasize BIMI's role in the broader ecosystem of brand protection and user experience, which indirectly supports engagement and reputation, leading to better inbox placement.
Key opinions
- Trust signal: Experts view BIMI as a strong visual trust signal that helps users quickly identify legitimate senders, which is critical in combating phishing and email fraud.
- Authentication enforcement: The requirement of DMARC enforcement for BIMI adoption naturally strengthens a domain's email security posture, which is beneficial for deliverability in general.
- Indirect engagement: Improved user confidence and a more recognizable brand presence can lead to higher open and click rates, contributing to a positive sender reputation. Monitoring your blocklist monitoring can also help maintain reputation.
- Value for brands: Beyond metrics, BIMI offers significant brand protection and recognition benefits, which are long-term strategic advantages.
Key considerations
- Foundation in authentication: BIMI's effectiveness is predicated on a correctly implemented DMARC policy. Without it, BIMI cannot function, and engagement benefits will not materialize. Our guide to DMARC benefits offers more insight.
- Gradual adoption: While growing, BIMI support is not universal across all mailbox providers. Marketers should manage expectations regarding immediate, widespread logo display. Mailgun offers a good explanation of Gmail's expanded BIMI support.
- Measuring indirect impact: Attributing specific engagement boosts solely to BIMI can be challenging given other variables in an email program. Experts recommend a holistic view of email program health and metrics.
Expert from Spam Resource highlights that BIMI, by displaying verified logos, contributes to increased trust signals for recipients, which can indirectly lead to higher engagement.
Expert from Spam Resource notes that while BIMI isn't a direct deliverability factor, its strong authentication requirements for logo display make it a valuable component of an overall trusted sending reputation.
What the documentation says
Official documentation and technical guides from major email service providers and industry organizations consistently describe BIMI as a standard for displaying authenticated brand logos in email clients. They emphasize its reliance on strong DMARC enforcement and its role in visual brand identification and trust. While direct quantifiable impacts on engagement metrics are often presented as potential outcomes rather than guarantees, the consensus is that BIMI contributes positively to the overall email ecosystem by enhancing user experience and bolstering security.
Key findings
- Visual authentication: Documentation highlights BIMI's primary function as a method to visually verify sender identity through a trusted brand logo.
- DMARC dependency: BIMI strictly requires a DMARC policy of 'quarantine' or 'reject' to ensure the authenticity of the sender, reinforcing the importance of proper DMARC policy transition.
- Enhanced user experience: The display of a familiar logo helps recipients quickly recognize and trust legitimate emails, streamlining the decision-making process for opening messages.
- Indirect engagement: While not directly a deliverability factor, increased brand recognition and trust derived from BIMI can lead to higher open rates and improved user interaction, thereby benefiting sender reputation. Mailgun discusses what BIMI means for email senders.
Key considerations
- Technical requirements: Implementing BIMI involves specific DNS records and a correctly formatted SVG logo, which may also require a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) for certain mailbox providers.
- Logo specifications: Logos must adhere to strict SVG format and content guidelines for successful display across different clients. Our guide on validating your BIMI SVG can help.
- Evolution of support: The landscape of BIMI adoption by mailbox providers is continuously evolving, so consistent monitoring of support is advisable.
Documentation from Mailgun explains that BIMI helps recipients quickly identify legitimate emails through verified brand logos and checkmarks, which contributes to increased trust.
Documentation from Email on Acid states that BIMI can persuade subscribers to open and engage with messages, signaling positive user interaction to mailbox providers.
