Tag Archives: BIMI

Is BIMI Dead?

When Google, Yahoo and Apple announced their email applications would support BIMI, it appeared that BIMI was ready to become an important standard in email marketing. Think about it: Your precious logo directly attached to every email you send, right there in the subject line. You get instant brand recognition and, thanks to the DMARC requirement, trust.

But, BIMI adoption is hitting some serious speed bumps…

What’s going wrong?

BIMI has two major technical issues and one misconception contributing to slow adoption by businesses. Let’s start with the misconception.

BIMI Requires Strict DMARC policies

In order for an email to even be considered for BIMI, the sending domain must have implemented DMARC, must send DMARC compliant email and must configure their DMARC policy to 100% Reject or Quarantine. The major misconception we hear from our customers is: “Strict policies might stop some legitimate email from getting to the recipient”.

There is some truth to this, so, let’s break it down:

  • Email that is not DMARC compliant is inherently assumed to be suspect by the Inbox Provider.
  • Email that is DMARC compliant has a higher trust level.
  • Strict DMARC Policies instruct the Inbox Provider to stop non-compliant email.
  • Inbox Providers may choose to ignore or accept DMARC policies, but most incorporate them into their inbox placement algorithms.

Regardless of your DMARC policy, non-compliant email will be suspect, however, with a stricter policy ALL your compliant email will have a higher trust level. Going to a strict DMARC policy is better for your email delivery. You can fix a temporary compliance issue, earning trust is hard.

MxToolbox Delivery Center was designed to help keep all of your legitimate email DMARC compliant and quickly alert you to areas of non-compliance to keep your email deliverability at the highest level.

Getting a BIMI-Compliant Logo can be Difficult

The BIMI standard requires a square logo that reflects the brand of the domain, formatted in SVG, that meets very specific requirements and often requires “a few manual tweaks”. For most of our clients attempting to adopt BIMI, MxToolbox has found that getting a BIMI-compliant logo to be time-consuming and difficult. Until this process is simpler, companies will struggle to adopt BIMI.

Most BIMI Inbox Providers Require a Certificate

The BIMI Group originally made BIMI completely open on the assumption that achieving DMARC-compliance with strict policies was sufficiently difficult to prevent spoofing. However, spammers and fraudsters are quite savvy and capable of adapting quickly. For example, grab a BIMI logo from a legitimate company like Bank of America, setup a fake domain like BanofAmerica.net with SPF, DKIM, DMARC and BIMI and start spamming. It looks legitimate enough to fool the average spamming target and leverages a known brand’s legitimate logo.

To combat this potential loophole, BIMI Inbox Providers are requiring an evidence document called a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) issued by a 3rd-party authority like DigiCert or Entrust Datacard. These authorities investigate your domain and issue a credential that certifies your DMARC and BIMI setup and issues a certification specific to your domain. This is similar to having a Secure Certificate for SSL/HTTPS.

The speed bump for BIMI adoption is that there are only two VMC issuers at present and the cost is $1100-$1500 per year, per domain. While this is negligible for big, well-known brands, smaller companies or companies with multiple domains may be priced out of the market further reducing the potential of BIMI.

The MxToolbox Expert Take

BIMI has become a bit of a moving target that makes it difficult to recommend at present. While our team of experts stands by to help you adopt SPF, DKIM, DMARC and BIMI, we no longer see BIMI as being essential or urgent until the standard stabilizes and/or the costs decrease.

Adopting DMARC and getting DMARC to a strict policy is imperative for good email delivery and adopting BIMI. Get started today with MxToolbox Delivery Center

Apple to Support BIMI in Native Mail Applications

Apple Mail recently announced BIMI adoption within its email applications in iOS 16 and MacOS Ventura. In September. Apple will become the most recent email client to support BIMI.

Why adopt BIMI?

BIMI gives email recipients more confidence in messages they receive and helps them avoid fraudulent emails by forcing senders to utilize new technologies to make email more secure.

BIMI gives marketers and businesses enhanced branding opportunities by attaching the company’s logo to verified messages in the inbox as a reward for adopting DMARC email security technologies. Your customers will trust your correspondence more and your brand will be enhanced.

What is BIMI?

BIMI, or Brand Indicators for Message Identification, is a DNS-based email technology that allows a company to specify a logo for inbox providers to display in an email client. Email providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and now Apple Mail, can show this logo to their users in the subject line of certified messages from the sending company. If you receive a legitimate email from Yahoo!, for example, this logo will appear:

How do I get BIMI?

BIMI requires DMARC. Before you can get your logo displayed in Apple Mail’s inbox, you need to get your email fully DMARC compliant, then apply strict DMARC policies. Becoming DMARC compliant is a process, but it is very beneficial and strongly recommended. You need to know who is sending email on your behalf, ensure they are properly configured with both SPF and DKIM, and regularly monitor DMARC delivery reports to understand DMARC compliance.

Once your verified email sources are fully DMARC compliant, you can start enforcing stricter “Quarantine” or “Reject” policies with your DMARC configuration. Inbox Providers like Yahoo!, Google and now Apple Mail will only attach a BIMI logo to your email if the email is DMARC compliant and you have a “100% Reject policy”.

Need Help with BIMI and DMARC?

Checkout your BIMI configuration

Our free BIMI Lookup tool searches for a BIMI record for any submitted domain name. If a record is found, it is shown in detail after a series of diagnostic checks are performed against the record. For example, below are the results for chase.com.

Get DMARC Compatible!

To maintain the highest levels of email deliverability using DMARC, businesses like yours need a proven Email Delivery management system, such as MxToolbox Delivery Center. Our Delivery Center provides valuable insight into your email delivery status and the continual maintenance necessary to sustain peak performance, including:

  • Manage SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and BIMI to improve compliance and reduce the threat of fraudsters and phishing campaigns using your domain.
  • Review daily volume and SPF, DKIM, and DMARC compliance rates to ensure the best email deliverability.
  • Implement Feedback Loops (FBLs) to gain unique data on how your recipients view your emails and when they mark them as spam.
  • Gradually move your DMARC policy to “Reject” to enable better inbox placement opportunities and reduce the risk of phishing and fraud using your domain.
  • Manage the ongoing requirements of maintaining optimal levels of email deliverability and security.

Want more assistance? MxToolbox has a Managed Services offering to get you DMARC compliant and maintain the highest levels of email delivery.

BIMI Lookup Tool

MxToolbox is excited to announce the unveiling of another free tool for your use: the new BIMI Lookup tool. This innovative tool enables you to test your Brand Indicator for Message Identification (BIMI) records, ensuring that your BIMI record is correct and adheres to the current standards.  A missing or incorrectly formatted BIMI record means your customers may not see your domain’s logo in their inboxes. 

What’s BIMI and Why’s It Such a Big Deal?

BIMI is an industry-wide standards effort to display brand logos next to the brand’s email messages in their customer’s inboxes as indicators of trust to help message recipients recognize and avoid fraudulent emails delivered to their inboxes. This new standard, which is currently in beta testing, is important to email senders and their customers alike. Businesses get a prime opportunity to add trust to the emails they send and increase the visibility and ROI of their email programs, while recipients also benefit from senders deploying DMARC and other BIMI authentication standards to reduce the success of phishing attacks.

BIMI builds off of DMARC, with some outlets calling it DMARC 2.0, and will only display if you have deployed DMARC. Several Oath brands (Yahoo!, AOL, etc.) are currently beta testing the BIMI standard with their mailbox users. Gmail will also be rolling out their own beta test of the BIMI protocol in 2020. With Gmail’s current 1.2 billion worldwide users able to see a company’s logo displayed within a year’s time, adopting the BIMI standard will be highly beneficial to your business email practices. As DMARC and BIMI work in tandem to improve message delivery, it becomes imperative your brand utilizes these pioneering email technologies and standards.

How MxToolbox’s BIMI Lookup Tool Works

The new BIMI Lookup tool allows you to check for any errors included in your BIMI record published content, syntax check content, DMARC record format, or image format content. By entering your company’s domain name and clicking the “BIMI Lookup” button, this diagnostic tool will parse the BIMI record for the supplied domain, display its BIMI record, and run a series of diagnostic checks against that specific record. The provided results will help you recognize any current issues in your BIMI record’s setup that may prevent your logo from being displayed in Yahoo!, AOL, and Gmail (early 2020) inboxes.

To learn more about BIMI and how it’ll benefit your business, please click here.

Ultimate Combo

MxToolbox’s free BIMI Lookup tool is a great way to ensure your BIMI record is setup correctly and displays your logo as intended. BIMI provides your business an opportunity to grow your brand and protect your customers. Implementing this standard and monitoring it with our new tool are positive steps in improving your business email delivery. Don’t let your messages be sent to the Junk folder anymore.