Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is an email standard that allows you to display your brand's logo next to your authenticated emails in supported inboxes. This helps increase brand recognition and build trust with recipients.

Without BIMI	With BIMI

Good to know

• Setting up BIMI requires some technical steps, such as hosting your logo online and updating your domain’s DNS records. If you're not familiar with these tasks, we recommend contacting a developer or your company’s IT team. Note that Brevo's support team cannot help with BIMI setup, as the process takes place outside of Brevo.
• Brevo supports only one static BIMI header per account. As a result, the same BIMI logo will be used for all emails sent from Brevo, even if you send from different domains.

Why implement BIMI?

Expand the following accordions to learn more about the two main advantages of implementing BIMI:

How does BIMI work?

BIMI relies on domain authentication to make sure only trusted senders can display their logo.

It works on top of DMARC, which checks if your emails are properly authenticated using DKIM (digital signatures) and/or SPF (authorized senders). DMARC also ensures the domain in your email matches the one in these checks. To use BIMI, your domain must pass DMARC with a strict policy (quarantine or reject). ➡️ To learn more about DMARC policies, check our dedicated article FAQs - What is a DMARC policy and how does it affect the sending of my emails?.

Once that’s in place, you can publish a BIMI record with your logo. If your emails pass all the authentication checks, inbox providers that support BIMI will then display your logo.

Which inbox providers support BIMI?

BIMI is not yet supported by all inbox providers. To find the list of providers that support BIMI, visit the official BIMI website. 

Implement BIMI for your emails

Implementing BIMI consists of four steps, which mainly take place outside of Brevo. Click each step to view the details:

1. Ensure your domain is properly authenticated for DMARC compliance
2. Create and host your BIMI logo
3. (Optional) Obtain a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) for your BIMI logo
4. Add your BIMI record to your website's DNS settings

Step 1: Ensure your domain is properly authenticated for DMARC compliance

To implement BIMI, your domain must be properly authenticated with DKIM and/or SPF and have a strict DMARC policy. This means that:

• The "From" address in your emails must match the domain you've authenticated. This alignment is required for BIMI and helps inbox providers verify that your emails are legitimate.
• Your DMARC policy must be set to quarantine or reject. A none policy is not enough for BIMI to work.

By default, Brevo provides a basic DMARC record with a none policy. This meets the minimum sender requirements but is not enough for BIMI. 

To meet BIMI requirements, we recommend contacting a developer or your company’s IT team. You can also use a trusted tool like Valimail to help you configure a compliant DMARC policy set to quarantine or reject.

Here's an example of how your domain authentication should be configured to meet BIMI requirements:

➡️ To learn more, check our dedicated articles Authenticate your domain with Brevo and FAQs - What is a DMARC policy and how does it affect the sending of my emails?.

Step 2: Create and host your brand's BIMI logo

Next, you need to create your brand’s BIMI logo. To view detailed guidelines on the correct format and specifications, visit the official BIMI website.

Once your logo is ready, make sure to host it on a secure web server accessible via HTTPS.

Step 3: (Optional) Obtain a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) for your BIMI logo

Some inbox providers require your BIMI logo to be officially certified to confirm it belongs to your brand and domain.

To meet this requirement, you need to:

• Own a registered trademark for your logo by applying for trademark protection through the relevant trademark office.
• Obtain a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) from a trusted Mark Verifying Authority (MVA), such as Sectigo or DigiCert.
• Host your VMC file on a secure web server accessible via HTTPS.

Once your logo is certified, you’ll need to add the URL of your VMC to your BIMI DNS record, as explained in the next section.

Step 4: Add your BIMI record to your website's DNS settings

To apply BIMI to your emails, you need to add a BIMI record to your domain’s DNS settings. This step is similar to setting up domain authentication and must be done directly from your domain host’s account.

Here’s the default BIMI record format:

default._bimi.example.com IN TXT "v=BIMI1; l=https://example.com/logo.svg; a=https://example.com/vmc.pem;"

where:

• default._bimi.example.com
  The DNS record name where your BIMI information is published. Here,default is the default BIMI selector.

• IN TXT
  Indicates this is a TXT (text) record in your DNS, used to store the BIMI data. 

• "v=BIMI1;
  Specifies the BIMI version. BIMI1 is the current standard.

• l=https://example.com/logo.svg;
  The URL where your BIMI logo is hosted.

• (Optional) a=https://example.com/vmc.pem;"
  The URL to your Verified Mark Certificate (VMC), which proves that your logo is trademarked and officially certified.

You can add this BIMI record to your domain’s DNS by replacing:

• example.com with your own domain name,
• The logo URL with your hosted SVG logo, and
• The VMC URL with your certificate file.

Once you’ve completed all the setup steps and your emails pass all authentication checks, inbox providers that support BIMI may display your logo next to your emails. Keep in mind, each provider also runs its own checks before showing the logo. So, even if BIMI is correctly set up, the logo will only appear if the provider approves your email.

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.

If you’re looking for help with a project using Brevo, we can match you with the right certified Brevo Agency partner.