How to Add a Brand Logo and Blue Tick to Emails with BIMI

In recent times, Google is talking about Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI), which includes adding an MX Record, a SPF Record, a DMARC Record, and a BIMI Record. Adding an MX Record, an SPF Record and a DMARC Record is free and we have discussed the technical part on our website in the past – How to add DKIM, SPF Record, DMARC Record.

Activate the records, if you have already not used them. They add security features to your emails and are completely free to use. Next, test your domain for these records using this online tool:

For example, this is our domain’s test result:

We have the BIMI record (without the PEM certificate), and the other records are compliant. Hence we do not have the logo on all email clients, and blue tick mark is absent. Performing the steps up to this is recommended for preventing spoofing, spam etc. It will help with email delivery rate (avoiding getting in the spam folder) unless you spam.

This is India’s one private bank’s (axisbank.com) test result:

axisbank.com has a fully compliant BIMI record with the PEM certificate. You’ll see that the SVG logo is hosted on a CA server:

https://bimi.entrust.net/axisbank.com/logo.svg

How to Add BIMI Record and Get Brand Logo, Blue Tick to Emails

That is time taking and costly affair. First, you need your logo to be made a trademark. This is usually a government service, helped by private agencies, and the cost is not super high. It is recommended to have the trademark filed if your website is valuable.

Please note that, if you want to test (like we have done) without the PEM certificate from CA, you can use your existing logo skipping the trademark registration part. However, the logo must be yours i.e. it must be created or purchased by you/your business.

You can search the record for trademark on the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) website (https://branddb.wipo.int/branddb/en). Only a few trademark offices are approved for this purpose:

Supported by both Entrust and Digicert:

1. United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO),
2. Canadian Intellectual Property Office,
3. European Union Intellectual Property Office,
4. UK Intellectual Property Office,
5. Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt,
6. Japan Trademark Office,
7. Spanish Patent and Trademark Office O.A.,
8. IP Australia.

Supported by Digicert (plus the above list):

1. Korean Intellectual Property Office
2. Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial (Brazil)
3. Intellectual Property India

Trademark filing cost is not very high in India, it is around $60 for small companies. Within $100, you’ll get the trademark employing an agency. Naturally, it is 4 times in the US (around $400) because of the actual value of the currency in its own country.

The next part is the barrier for smaller brands and small businesses. Only Entrust and DigiCert issue the required digital certificate (it is like an EV SSL certificate) and the cost is a whooping $1500 per year.

If you got the certificate, then you can add the DNS TXT record for BIMI with these pattern of record:

Without the certificate from Entrust or Digicert, the record will be like this:

You can do this one like we did and got passed the BIMI Record test:

Here are the resources to create/convert the SVG logo:

Google has written in their documentation that “It can take up to 48 hours for BIMI to start working”.

Further reading of specification: