CEO, Principal Consultant
27/7/2021
As of July 2021, Google has announced that it will be supporting BIMI in Gmail, covering a huge number of both personal and business addresses.
BIMI, or Brand Indicators for Message Identification, is a new way that marketing teams can get their brand seen and trusted within their prospects’ inboxes.
The concept is simple: when someone opens their email inbox, instead of the generic initials of the sender next to the subject text, the recipient sees a company’s logo instead.
Tests during the development of BIMI found that a recognisable logo attached to emails drastically increases open rates and engagement – which is great news for marketing and sales teams!
In terms of requirements from BIMI, you must:
- Be a recognised, trustworthy sender of bulk emails
- Have a trademarked logo, in square SVG format, which is no larger than 32kb in size
- Have a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) for that logo – currently for Google only
The concept of using an authenticated logo is simple, but the benefits of usage go further than brand recognition.
As well as helping consumers to avoid phishing attacks from increasingly sophisticated scammers, BIMI logos won’t be possible to copy and will require setup of DKIM, SPF, and DMARC authentication. That not only means your branding in inboxes is recognisable – it will also make impersonation by spoofers much harder.
BIMI is currently supported in Google, Yahoo and Verizon Media inboxes, but it’s expected that more ESPs will follow Google’s lead.
Is your business interested in implementing BIMI, but isn’t sure where to start?
