Gmail now supports BIMI in its entirety. Here's how you can get BIMI set up in your email program.

Gmail has officially stated that it has rolled out universal support for BIMI after a year-long experiment to push the adoption of enhanced sender verification.

BIMI or Brand Indicators for Message Identification is an industry-standard that aims to enhance the widespread use of email authentication in the ecosystem while also giving senders a method to provide a more immersive experience for their consumers. Because BIMI is closely aligned with current email authentication technologies, senders must publish SPF, DKIM, and DMARC at the time of enforcement in order to make use of BIMI and the enhanced inbox experience.

Benefits of BIMI

For companies that take the effort to properly authenticate their emails, BIMI enhances visibility and engagement, making the email ecosystem safer and offering a better inbox experience. Gmail may identify brands as dangerous with question marks or another iconography if they don't follow specific requirements.

The following are some of the ways that BIMI helps your business:

Increasing brand awareness by including a trademarked logo in the inbox

Giving you complete control over how your company's logo appears across the world

Providing your emails with an aesthetic distinction in the inbox

Steps to Set-Up BIMI

BIMI in its most basic form is a text entry in an organization's DNS entries on its transmitting servers. The recipient's inbox provider conducts a DNS query to get the sending organization's BIMI text record when an email is sent. The location of the organization's logo is contained in this BIMI text item.

For more information, read how to create a BIMI record.

To use BIMI, a company must already have SPF or DKIM in place, as well as DMARC. While these requirements protect a domain from spoofing, they do not provide a visual indicator to the recipient that the email sender has been validated. A cryptographically protected emblem will be used to indicate the legality of BIMI-compliant domains, allowing the ordinary end user to readily identify legitimate senders.

The adoption of BIMI by Gmail highlights the value of email as a way of communicating with clients. Furthermore, it demonstrates that email's evolution is far from complete. On the contrary, the user experience is improving while senders are being rewarded for making the channel more secure. With Gmail and Verizon Media now supporting BIMI, email senders have a clear route forward: authenticate and provide new experiences for their receivers.

To learn more about BIMI and other email authentication protocols check out emailauth.io

Note: EmailAuth.io is part of the Infosec Ventures group and our core value lies in taking care of your most valuable digital asset: Email. We thrive to increase your Email Deliverability and help you get the maximum ROI from your mailing campaigns and increase trust amongst your customers, partners and vendors!