BIMI: How It Affects Email Authentication & Deliverability?

BIMI: How It Affects Email Authentication & Deliverability?

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Indication) is all the way new technology that has become an important part of an email or email marketing. Till now, when brands used to send promotional emails to their users and if the email lands in the user’s inbox, Gmail or yahoo would display only the first character of the brand name. Thus, the users were not 100% sure about the authenticity and genuineness of the email they are interacting with. Now, senders are using best practices to authenticate their emails using SPF & DKIM and DMARC.

Therefore, due to the increase in email users, a group was formed to develop a visual indicator and add a layer of security to email inboxes. Thus, BIMI was created.

What is BIMI?

BIMI is a technique of Brand Identification and Email Authentication. BIMI is an emerging standard that will help establish brand identity and trust on email channels. By using BIMI, a brand can display its organization’s logo in users’ inboxes with the fact that the email is authentic and is received from a verified source without requiring any internal checks.

BIMI enables an additional layer of email security and authentication by enabling the inbox to display brands logos besides the email. As a result, no scammer can use the same logo for their misuse or any type of email scam.

BIMI makes it easier for the users to trust the brand as it follows the authentication checks, add your brand logo to the sender and visible the inbox of the user along with the sender’s name. the users will start identifying your logo with your brand image.

BIMI Pre-requisites:

1. Being DMARC complaint (Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting And Conformance).
2. The domain and sub-domains are registered with a DNS authority.
3. The emails should be SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) compliant.
4. Your brand logo should be in SVG format.
5. The email sending domain should have impressive sent history and good deliverability.

Following the above points, it is expected that your brand logo should have a digital certificate called VMC (Verified mark Certificate) which ties together – your company, brand logo, and domain you are using to send the emails in the digital world. The reason is, that you will be able to track any malicious activity like any miscreant trying to use your company’s logo in their emails and take legal action against that.

The key benefits of enabling BIMI for an email sender:

• BIMI helps your brand to gain the trust of users by getting visibility of its brand logo in the user inbox.
• BIMI helps to reduce the risk to mailbox users.
• As the brand logo is present besides email, BIMI improves the user experience inside the inbox.
• It will remove the need of performing the extra task of logo management as global certification standards are applied to all those brands who wish their logos to be displayed.
• BIMI ensures the security of the users/customers and removes human errors attached to displaying the wrong logo.
• To enable the BIMI standard, your brand logo needs VMC, and you will gain complete control of your domain and your branding once it gets certified. So, brand security is a key benefit.
• BIMI puts an additional layer of security by enabling the inbox to display brands logos besides the email. Thus, it ensures email protection as any third party will not be able to use your brand logo for misuse.
• BIMI makes sure that your email security is complete before your email even hits the recipient’s inbox.
• BIMI enables good engagement which results in improved email deliverability. The more engagement you receive, the more improved your deliverability would be.

Implementation Steps to BIMI:

• Your domain should pass all the authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC).
• Validates the ownership of your logo through a digital certificate – VMC (Verified Mark Certificate).
• Register your logo as an official logo mark and pair it with the domain you will be using to send the emails.
• Get your domain and sub-domains registered with a DNS record.
• Always stick to the good sending practices, and avoid any abusive triggers.

Get started now!

BIMI is a technology that is all new to the email industry and soon is going to become mandatory for brands to display their brand logos for visibility and better engagement. The layer of security BIMI provides results in increased trust and relationships with your customers.

Due to the positive results, it provides to marketers, the usage of BIMI is expected to grow in the email industry.

Now, it’s time to get started and implement the above steps of BIMI and bring them into usage.

Once the BIMI program goes live, and all required things are being done, then you as an email sender can reap the benefits of displaying your brand’s logo on the email platform in the world.

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