All right, it’s been a nice break to cover other topics, but, we’re now back to talking about what’s really important for today’s direct marketers: email.

Allow us to introduce you to a new acronym in the industry, BIMI. This stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification.

But what exactly is it?

To put it simply, a BIMI allows brands to have a profile picture or logo for email users to see in their inbox. This profile picture or “indicator” will be viewable next to the sender’s name.  

Having a BIMI means that the brand has a verified sender logo. This allows for a boost in the brand’s visibility; the receiver quickly recognizes the brand standing out from other incoming emails. Not only that, the very act of having a BIMI is also helpful for improving trust about the brand.

BIMI was actually created to prevent fraudulent emails. Scams and phishing emails are becoming more common, but seeing a familiar brand’s logo next to an email creates a sense of trust about that email. It’s not just important to build trust with your client list, you have to be able to maintain that trust.

Any type of marketing requires a level of trust in order to be successful. So, the added value of BIMI for email marketing — where there is already an electronic layer separating the brand to the client — is extremely beneficial. A trusted email is much more likely to be opened than an email that could be suspicious or fake.

Marketers should absolutely strive to have a BIMI for their companies. Having one makes it easy for those on their subscriber list to easily identify that the email and the brand it is coming from are trustworthy. This improves confidence in the brand as well. While the improved brand awareness is a nice benefit, the biggest advantage of having a BIMI is that added trust.

For step-by-step instructions on setting up a BIMI, visit (or have your IT person visit): https://support.google.com/a/answer/10911528?hl=en

When a subscriber trusts that the email is from a verified sender, it is more likely to be opened.

And that’s the first goal of sending email marketing isn’t it?