How does BIMI work?
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Ever wonder why your favorite brand's logo suddenly shows up next to their emails in Gmail? That's BIMI in action. Here's how it actually works under the hood.
When you send an email, a mailbox provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Fastmail) checks a few things in this order. First, they look at your DMARC policy to make sure you're serious about email authentication. If your DMARC is set to quarantine or reject, that's the green light. Then they hunt for your BIMI DNS record at default._bimi.yourdomain.com.
That record points to your logo (must be SVG Tiny Portable Secure format, not a regular PNG) and optionally a Verified Mark Certificate. If you're using a VMC, the provider validates it. If everything checks out, your logo renders next to your message in the inbox.
Not all providers support BIMI yet, and some require a VMC while others accept self-asserted logos. The next step is to check which mailbox providers support BIMI so you know if your audience will see your logo.
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