What Is BIMI and Should Cold Emailers Care About It

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a newer email standard that displays your brand logo next to your emails in supporting clients. Here is what cold emailers need to know.

What BIMI does

BIMI allows you to display your company's logo in the avatar position next to your emails in Gmail and other supporting email clients. Instead of a generic initial or blank avatar, recipients see your recognizable brand mark.

Requirements for BIMI

You need a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject (p=quarantine or p=reject). You need a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) from a certificate authority. You need your logo in SVG format meeting specific technical requirements. You need to publish a BIMI DNS record. Should cold emailers implement BIMI? For most cold emailers, BIMI is not a priority. The setup cost (VMC certificates cost $1,000+/year) and requirements (DMARC at quarantine or reject) make it impractical for secondary cold email domains. However, BIMI is worth implementing on your primary business domain. When prospects research your company and see emails from your main domain with a verified logo, it builds trust.

The deliverability connection

BIMI does not directly improve deliverability. However, the prerequisite of having DMARC at quarantine or reject means you must have strong authentication — which does improve deliverability. BIMI is a visual benefit built on an authentication foundation.

For now

Focus on SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your cold email domains. Consider BIMI for your primary brand domain as a trust signal for inbound and transactional email. If you want to explore BIMI, ensure your authentication foundation is solid first by checking all records with the free tools at Warm Inboxes.

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