BIMI
for brand recognition in the inbox

Have you ever wondered how to get your business logo to show beside your email in the Gmail inbox? An example can be seen in the image below.

BIMI for inbox branding

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI for short) is the answer!

In a nutshell, setting up for BIMI involves creating an image of your logo in a specific format, paying for your logo to be certified, and adding a record to your domain's DNS. Below are helpful links about setting up for BIMI.

The presence of your logo beside your emails in the inbox will not only provider stronger brand exposure and help your email stand out, but also help your recipient to know that the email in their inbox is legitimately from your organisation.

BIMI was launched in 2021 and has been slowly growing momentum. In September 2024, it received attention due to Gmail commencing support for logos where a trademark is not present. Prior to that, if your logo wasn't the subject of a trademark registration, then Gmail wouldn't show your brand logo. Obviously, there is additional cost and time involved to register your logo as a trademark, so reducing this requirement by a major player in email clients will be beneficial for the uptake of the identification.

Just to be clear, Google doesn't own BIMI. Ultimately the idea is that as many email providers as possible will support BIMI, but at the moment, it is only supported by a handful of email providers.

Costs

As at September 2024, the cost of certification of your logo is around $99 USD per month.

Obviously there's a bit of effort required in following the process of creating your logo in the right format. You should already have a DKIM, DMARC and SPF setup as we encourage that while using Enudge. We expect that the whole process should only take an hour or two to follow.

Useful Links

  • BIMI Working Group - everything you would like to know about Brand Indicators for Message Identification.
  • Setting up BIMI - Google support page walk through of the process and different types of logo image files that can be used.

 

If you would like help setting up for BIMI please don't hesitate to get in touch.