With the rise in cyber attacks, phishing, and impersonation attempts, the corporate email landscape has become ever more reliant on email security. As consumers are increasingly unwilling to open legitimate email communications from once trusted senders, companies need to ensure that all of their communications come across as secure and legitimate from their end. That's where BIMI comes into play. Not only does it enhance security as an email authentication tool, but it also promotes brand awareness. A company utilizing BIMI to authenticate its emails has one more layer of branding acknowledgment and authentication when reaching out to others.

Understanding BIMI and Its Role in Email Authentication

BIMI is a relatively new email authentication standard. It increases security and enhances brand visibility as it allows a company's logo to display next to authenticated emails. Yet BIMI relies upon other standards for authentication SPF, DKIM, and DMARC because without the authentication provided by these other standards, for example, your email will not appear as coming from an authenticated source. BIMI not only protects against brand impersonation and phishing, but it also creates a greater chance that an unsuspecting email recipient of a brand's email will actually open it and read it. Especially compounded with such deliverability enhancers as warmy.io, which bolsters sender reputation, it's guaranteed to go into the inbox and not the spam folder; for the average person who gets an email from a brand and sees the logo there, they're more likely to associate it with that malicious gmail.com address and not respond in a vulnerable manner to brand impersonation.

Enhancing Brand Recognition Through BIMI

Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of BIMI is the potential for email branding and ensuing brand loyalty. If a consumer sees an email from a brand in their inbox and then sees the brand's logo next to it, they'll recognize it and hopefully, be more inclined to open and read the message. BIMI is most effective for any brand that engages in email marketing, customer communications, or purchase-based emails. Where a brand previously only needed a catchy subject line or eye-catching preview text to get a customer to open it, now it can use its reputable logo to establish authority.

Reducing Phishing and Email Fraud Risks

One of the most significant cybersecurity threats for businesses is business email compromise and phishing. Fraudsters impersonate legitimate companies often and attempt to acquire sensitive information, access to links, and opening of file attachments. BIMI decreases the chances of phishing and email spoofing because it mandates a company to go through a rigorous certification process for its logo to ever appear in a client's email application. Therefore, the unauthorized phishing attempts that try to use a logo will not be able to validate and verify making it less likely to trick an unsuspecting person through an email scam. The addition of BIMI provides companies with an extra layer of email security and reassurance for clients that any communication coming from the company's domain is authentic and safe to interact with.

Improving Email Deliverability and Inbox Placement

Email deliverability is crucial for any company that needs to rely on email communication. Unfortunately, even honest, good intentioned emails go undelivered because they end up in the spam folder due to a lack of authentication. Yet, with BIMI and DMARC implementation, companies can improve their email deliverability and, thus, inbox placement as they show email clients that they are a legitimate, authenticated sender. When a company can expect its emails to pass authentication levels, there is a higher chance that they will reside in the primary inbox instead of being denoted as spam. This leads to higher customer participation, more effective email marketing, and a more accessible communication channel with customers.

Implementing BIMI: What Businesses Need to Know

To properly implement BIMI, firms have to use the technology necessary to authenticate. They must bombard their receivers with email sender authentication first. Companies must get SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records in place with DMARC either p=quarantine or p=reject so as not to send suspicious, malicious emails. Basically, if an email is quarantined or rejected, it lets the sender know it was not within their power to send that email. Once authenticated, companies need an SVG image of their company logo to BIMI specifications and a BIMI DNS record that is published and connects the logo to the domain. Furthermore, certain email providers require a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) to act as authentication of the legitimacy of the logo used. Post-implementation, companies will literally see their verified logo appear within supported email apps, and from there on out, it boosts security and awareness for each and every email sent.

How BIMI Supports a Better Email Experience for Customers

BIMI enhances the customer experience as well. Consumers live in a universe saturated with email promotional, transactional, notifications and anything that elevates the customer experience via legitimized recognition helps ease the burden of sifting through the arduous task of finding messages from their preferred brands. A logo allows consumers to recognize, immediately, that this correspondence is from a legitimate source and not a phishing attempt. When consumers feel secure opening these emails, they're more inclined to convert and retain. In addition, as the culture becomes increasingly desensitized to email safeguards, those companies that have one will have everything to make sense with safe and efficient communication.

Boosting Customer Confidence with Verified Emails

When, in today's world, so many people delete emails from anyone they don't know, this BIMI gives consumers another level of security that the email expected is coming from a reputable brand. An email with a verified logo from a brand allows consumers to not instantly delete what's spam or phishing but instead to access and engage with the email. This type of promise raises email open rates, builds connections, and improves engagement. Thus, by adopting BIMI, companies take an ethical business decision with brand protection and an ethical customer one, for they will enjoy a smoother, safer communication history with the brand. Brands that extend themselves for the sake of email security foster a good reputation and a trustworthy one that lasts.

Aligning BIMI with Broader Cybersecurity Strategies

BIMI is part of a bigger picture. BIMI is not the only form of email authentication. It's part of a bigger picture for cybersecurity that any company looking to secure its future should be adopting incrementally over time. As the digital world expands and grows more aggressive with attacks, the only way to maintain data security, brand security, and anti-fraud efforts is to have an arsenal of cybersecurity options.

Thus, when companies implement BIMI and the other requisite security options like multi-factor authentication (MFA) implementation, endpoint protection, security audits, and more they position themselves in a better state with a cybersecurity arsenal to defend against all but certain attacks. Because email is one of the most frequent attack vectors, having BIMI already puts the company a step ahead of would-be attackers. With digital security only growing in importance, any organization that implements BIMI as part of its cybersecurity plans will be one step ahead in protecting its data, its logo, and communicating with clients in a safe, verified manner.

The Future of BIMI and Email Security

BIMI will become a staple of email authentication before we know it, especially as more and more email service providers and brands adopt it. Given the current cybersecurity crisis, brands must adopt better security measures to protect brand equity and consumer loyalty. Based on the fact that BIMI is a supplementary addition to the pre-existing email authentication hierarchy, using it will only raise security measures, brand uniformity, and greater marketing success. The faster companies adopt BIMI, the better their opportunities for the future of sending authenticated, trusted, and brand-visible emails.

Conclusion

BIMI represents an exciting new frontier in branding and email security. BIMI works to authenticate a company's email based on the likelihood that a company's legitimate emails will be marked as spam (scam phishing attempts) and by increasing legitimate email deliverability. When a company chooses to use BIMI, it will plug into the email authentication standards that are already in place for DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to authorize that only legitimate email transmissions can be sent in this company's name. Furthermore, BIMI allows for brands to obtain incremental trust with their customers, their open rates protected and a better email presence in customer inboxes across the world. As companies seek to establish better cybersecurity in the future as boundaries against breaches, BIMI is just one additional way toward more secure communication efforts and championing email security and branding.