How BIMI is Revolutionizing Email Marketing

BIMI is an email marketing standard that enables organizations to display their logo of choice in an up-front centralized manner on DMARC-verified emails. Leveraging BIMI increases conversion, improves deliverability, and creates better branding.

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BIMI is a revolutionary email standard that enables brands to display verified logos on emails sent to a client’s inbox. Besides being eye-catching, it boosts brand equity and creates trust, making customers more likely to respond to calls to action. When paired with the already best-in-class ROI of email marketing – $1 spent by organizations earns $36 back – BIMI is set to disrupt marketing and boost the profits of all marketers who use it.

Data shows that email usage is growing over time. The increasing popularity of social media and other platforms will not replace the utility of email marketing. 309.6 billion emails were sent in 2021, while 333.2 billion were sent in 2022. However, this means more competition inside a client’s inbox, and marketers must look for ways to stand out. BIMI’s authenticated logo display technology provides the perfect solution.

What is BIMI, and how does it revolutionize email marketing? Email Marketers can leverage this technology to increase returns by understanding it thoroughly.

What is BIMI?

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is a standard that allows organizations to display a verified brand logo alongside an email message in the recipient’s email client, thereby increasing consumer trust in the sender’s authenticity and message. BIMI combines DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) and DMARC to validate that a domain owner sent an email message and that the domain owner has authorized the use of their logo.

How Does BIMI Work?

BIMI leverages DMARC to provide logos on authenticated emails. DMARC is a standard that safeguards email recipients from threats like spoofing, spam, and phishing. The DMARC protocol verifies emails sent by marketers before they reach a receiver’s inbox. After passing DMARC, the receiving email server sends queries to the marketer’s Domain Name System (DNS) for the presence of BIMI records. If a BIMI record is found, the logo designated by the sender is then shown in the receiver’s inbox.

This process can be summarized as follows:

1. The email is received from exampledomain.com
2. The DMARC alignment of the email is checked against the policy published by the domain.
3. The receiving system then checks a BIMI DNS record for the sender’s domain. It functions by using selectors found in the BIMI email headers.
4. The receiving system downloads a Verified Mark Certificate from the location specified in the BIMI records. The VMC must be from an authenticated authority and match exampledomain.com
5. The SVG Logo in the VMC is displayed in a centralized way in the receiver’s mailbox.

How BIMI Makes Email Marketing Safer

Since it requires DMARC to function, BIMI incentivizes large brands to adopt email authentication standards like DMARC when conducting their marketing campaigns. The senders who use DMARC and BIMI are rewarded with being able to display their brands on the logo.

DMARC’s standard authentication stops adversaries from spoofing the domain and organization. Spoofing is a cyber-attack where an email’s “From” field is changed maliciously. DMARC also lets marketers get reports from servers that receive their emails. Such information allows organizations to check for authentication failures or malicious activities.

Here are the benefits of using BIMI:

• Increasing Conversion Rates: There is a significant visual difference between an email with a logo and one without a logo. Even a half second more eye time increases click-through rates and brand value.
• Aiding Brand Recognition: BIMI puts the logo in the front and center of the display, helping brand recognition. Marketers can share just one standard image for their brand across all platforms and keep their visibility high.
• Reduces Costs and Frustration: By leveraging BIMI, organizers do not need to spend resources developing proprietary logo display systems. BIMI enables an all-around better experience in the recipient’s inbox and helps with frustrations connected to brand proliferation, such as standardization of branding.
• Refined Control Over Branding: At present, several email clients already attempt to pull brand logos into a receiver’s inbox. However, this is done without the brand’s input and can result in improper images being displaced. BIMI allows the brand to display which logo to show, increasing brand relevance.
• Preventing Fraudulent Email: The Design of BIMI and leveraging authentication standards like DMARC helps prevent email fraud. Authenticated brand logos also act as an additional safeguard over spoofing from malicious adversaries that steal logos.
• Enhancing Email Deliverability: BIMI’s security features mean that receivers unsubscribe less often, and there are fewer spam complaints. All these features, combined with the reduction of fraud, also lead to better email deliverability.
• Raising Client Trust: BIMI increases client trust by reducing fraud and providing email marketers better control over the customer experience. Since BIMI requires DMARC, the clients know that marketers are taking the recommended steps to secure emails.

How Does BIMI Benefit Your Organization?

Established organizations can benefit from BIMI as it improves email deliverability by a significant amount with minimum effort. Many email servers, especially corporate ones, mark unauthenticated emails as spam. BIMI avoids this undesirable event. BIMI also helps established organizations optimize their current marketing campaigns, increase deliverability and deliver better open rates.

How Can BIMI Help Small and Upcoming Businesses?

Brand building and client relationships are the two most critical areas for a startup. However, new enterprises face a significant issue keeping the brand identity and logos uniform across several major marketing platforms. Improper branding can lead to the loss of clients and may even cause unforeseen reputational damages. BIMI helps startups by enabling them to upload one standard logo in a centralized display across supported inboxes. In this manner, clients can recognize the startup’s brand instantly.

Final Words

BIMI empowers senders to display a verified standard logo on emails in an up-front central manner. Organizations should pay attention to such branding power, or they may fall behind their competitors. BIMI increases the confidence recipients, and email security systems have in an email. Applying the standard improves brand visibility, increases open rates, enhances deliverability, and creates winning email marketing campaigns.