There are a lot of emails that arrive in your inbox, but not all of them deserve the same trust. That’s where BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) comes in, a new email authentication standard that improves security while increasing brand visibility and engagement.
With BIMI, legitimate senders get an extra layer of trust and a noticeable boost in brand visibility. An email with BIMI displays the sender’s logo next to their name. The logo helps distinguish a legitimate email from a fake attempt. This prevents subscribers from falling for phishing traps.
What is BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification)?
BIMI is an email standard that creating a new mosaic dataset from the catalog allows inbox providers to display your verified logo right next to your name in the recipient’s inbox.
When an email passes BIMI authentication, it is associated with your official logo. As a result, the recipient sees a visual indicator (your logo) next to the email sender’s name. This provides instant assurance that the email is legitimate and protects your brand from domain spoofing.
BIMI is available with inbox providers that support it. The BIMI group currently lists the following as participating inbox providers.
Some services have not yet adopted BIMI.
How Does BIMI Work?
BIMI works with existing security reinforcement to protect users email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to strengthen fraud prevention measures and improve your email sender reputation.
Each of these protocols has unique purposes.
BIMI goes a step further by adding a visual logo to authenticated emails. This is done through a DNS (Domain Name System) TXT record. The URL for your logo is stored here. All email service providers (ESPs) can access it to view.
In order to display your logo, your canada cell numbers domain must pass the DMARC policy with a “quarantine” or “reject” policy. Once set up, email service providers like Gmail and Yahoo can pick up the logo and display it next to your emails, which leads to greater trust and better engagement from recipients.
Why Do You Need BIMI?
By some estimates, phishing is responsible for 80% of reported security incidents, which explains why the email ecosystem (and even the sender) puts a lot of effort into authentication.
1. Spam and email bounces
Some businesses send out a lot of spam, but this approach has two serious limitations:
Many recipients mark these emails as spam. When they do, your sender reputation is at risk because the inbox provider notices that some people think the email is spam. Therefore, the inbox starts to treat emails from the sender as spam.
These emails bounce because many addresses are invalid. A high bounce rate is a strong indicator of a spammer . The email ecosystem takes email bounces very seriously.
So, if your emails bounce or contain spam, different service providers blocklist those emails .
A little carelessness at this point can backfire and even lead to ESPs or ISPs blocking you. Of course, there are ways on how to remove your IP from the block list. However, it is better to keep your email list clean and avoid sending spam .
2. Malicious impersonation
Emails impersonating trusted organizations like banks or government agencies pose a major risk. BIMI combats domain spoofing and phishing by giving recipients a trusted visual cue—your logo.
They can easily scam recipients, spread false information, or trick people into sharing sensitive and confidential information.
Strong email authentication measures can reject such emails or redirect them to spam. Such actions greatly reduce the risk of malicious emails. Email standards such as BIMI further strengthen fraud prevention efforts.