BIMI Beyond the Basics: What it Takes to Get your Logo into Inboxes
What is BIMI?
Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is a standard that associates your official brand logo with an email authenticated by DMARC. BIMI gives brands opportunities to reinforce their logo while building trust as a sender of authentic messages.
According to research from dmarc.org, the total number of BIMI records has grown from 10,000 at the end of 2021 to almost 35,000 in mid-2024. Despite growing numbers, the standard’s adoption rate is low. BIMI Radar is tracking global BIMI adoption across 70+ million domains in the categories of BIMI Ready, BIMI Aware, and BIMI with Verified Mark Certificates (VMC). Less than one percent of the tracked domains have adopted BIMI.
How Does BIMI Work?
Like other email authentication standards, BIMI is a text record that lives in your domain’s DNS and includes the location of the brand’s logo, a square SVG image.
To implement BIMI, you must set up both SPF and DKIM for your email domain, along with DMARC at a p=reject or p=quarantine policy. This shows receivers that you are proactive about the types of emails your domain sends and that you’re mindful of your brand and your reputation as a trusted sender.
Additionally, you’ll need to follow good deliverability practices and cultivate a healthy, engaged subscriber list with good email open rates. Your practices will determine if a receiver decides to display your BIMI-based logo, as it is up to the email receiver if your logo is displayed. Here’s a broader discussion on deliverability as a key concern for today’s marketers.
How to Deploy BIMI
Deploying BIMI has two fundamental factors: having a DMARC policy in place set to an enforcement policy of p=reject or p=quarantine, and maintaining a good reputation as a sender via high engagement rates, low bounces, and minimal spam complaints.
Although reputation can be subjective depending upon the individual receiver, having the underpinning technologies of DMARC, SPF, and DKIM in place shows the world that you are serious about your domain’s reputation and contributes to building your reputation as a sender.
Setting up a BIMI record also requires current and complete trademark information for your logo file. Ensure that you know how to access this information before taking steps to set up BIMI.
Use BIMI tools
dmarcian provides tools to help you get going with BIMI. Our BIMI Inspector can help you check your BIMI record, understand which requirements you already meet, and what you still need to do. When you’re ready to go further, the BIMI Builder will guide you through necessary steps to generate your BIMI record. Both tools can be found on our website and in the DMARC Management Platform.
Creating a BIMI-Ready SVG Logo
To properly set up BIMI, your company needs to produce a square logo file in Scaled Vector Graphics (commonly known as SVG) format. Specifically, the file must fall under the Portable/Secure SVG profile (P/S). This profile is mandated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as a subset of the SVG Tiny 1.2 specification.
Before exporting and converting your file, be mindful of the design and preparation of the image itself. Here are some recommendations for designing a BIMI logo:
- Center your image in a square frame. This minimizes the risk of parts of your image getting cut off when email providers show BIMI logos in a square or circular frame.
- Don’t exceed 32 kilobytes in file size. BIMI logos are displayed small and should be fast-loading for the email recipient.
- Stick to a solid background. Transparency and other animated effects may not display properly.
- Use a simple icon. All BIMI images must be trademarked by the company publishing the BIMI record in order to be used.
Once your design is complete, export it from your design software or convert the existing file to an SVG Tiny 1.2 file. Many popular design programs such as Adobe Illustrator are capable of exporting in this format.
As of May 2026, there is no current way to directly export an SVG P/S file without manual modification. Converting an SVG Tiny 1.2 file into an SVG P/S file can be achieved with any standard text editor, such as textEdit on Macintosh computers or similar programs.
These are the important elements required within an SVG P/S file:
- The following attributes are correctly identified:
- “baseProfile” set to “tiny-ps”
- “Version” set to “1.2”
- The following elements exist within the file:
- <title> representing the name of the company
- <desc> representing a description of the file (not required but highly recommended)
- The file contains no animation, external links, interactive elements or scripts
- The “x=” and “y=” attributes within the <svg> root have been removed entirely
Once you’ve made the proper edits and ensured all the requirements are met, your file is ready for use with BIMI!
CMC vs. VMC Certificates
When acquiring a BIMI certificate, you will first need to determine if your business or organization will be using a Common Mark Certificate (CMC) or Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) for your domain. The differences between CMC and VMC start with the mark your organization uses for BIMI. If you have a government mark or registered trademark, a VMC can be purchased and utilized; otherwise, a CMC can be obtained as an alternative. Both will boost email security, enhance visual trust, and provide for brand visibility on email providers that support BIMI.
Other factors that influence the purchase of a CMC or VMC will vary depending on needs for visibility, affordability, level of trust, and email provider support. Senders with VMC certificates will have a blue checkmark shown alongside their BIMI logo in inboxes such as Gmail, indicating a highly trusted verified sender.
With CMC, this checkmark will be absent but your logo will still have visibility. Additionally, while a CMC is more affordable and faster to process because there is no trademark validation requirement, they do have limited support from email providers and clients compared to VMC. Some email providers and clients that support BIMI may not support the use of CMC.
Here is a breakdown of the major differences between CMC and VMC Certificates:
Mark Certificate Issuers
Now that you have selected either a CMC or VMC, you will need to find a certificate issuer. VMC and CMCs are issued by Mark Verifying Authorities (MVAs), typically Certification Authorities (CAs) that have undergone rigorous validation. Currently there are three Mark Verifying Authorities (MVAs) approved by The BIMI Group available to issue these certificates. As of May 2026, MVAs include:
Additionally, there are third-party vendors that resell certificates from the previously listed vendors. Examples include Sectigo, SSL2BUY, SSLTrust, and others.
How to obtain a VMC Certificate
If you choose to purchase a VMC, you will need to go through a validation process. This includes providing a BIMI specified SVG file of your logo, creation of a Certificate Signing Request (CSR), providing organizational information, proof of trademark or government mark and designation of who the certificate owner and technical administrator will be. The certificate provider will review this information, validate your domain, request additional information and an interview as needed to process your certificate request. Once your certificate provider has reviewed and certified the provided information, you will be issued a certificate.
How to obtain a CMC Certificate
Obtaining a CMC is a simpler process. Your organization or business is required to provide the file of your BIMI-specific SVG logo along with domain and business information. Once validated, the certificate issuer will provide you with your CMC.
Trademark Documentation for VMC
For organizations pursuing a Verified Mark Certificate, you’ll need to supply formal proof of your logo’s trademark registration during the validation process with an MVA.
This step can prove trickier than expected, as most companies rarely need to retrieve trademark certificates in daily operations. The documents are typically managed by legal, IP, or compliance teams and may require internal research to identify the right contact to locate the registration and to confirm it matches your exact BIMI SVG logo. Public trademark search tools like USPTO, EUIPO, or WIPO databases) may help with avoiding delays.
Once you’re ready, it’s time to host your BIMI SVG logo and CMC or VMC, update your DNS and validate your work. Online tools are available to check your BIMI installation, including on our DMARC Management Platform.
A properly-configured DMARC record is a requirement for BIMI. It’s never too late to gain control of your email security and learn more about DMARC with our DMARC Management Platform and useful guides such as Advancing your DMARC Policy.
Want to continue the conversation? Head over to the dmarcian Forum
