BIMI, its Features and Impact On Email Marketing

Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches—at scale.” – David Newman

Email marketing is not a thing of the past, it might have received a lot of resentment in the market over the years, but it is still one of the most fruitful marketing mediums today. Most brands rely on email marketing as a basis of their marketing strategies.

With the constantly evolving market trends today and the update to privacy and similar polices, email marketing concepts have had to evolve.

While we talk about the evolving email marketing marketing and technologies that drive this channel, it is crucial to talk about BIMI today. BIMI stands for brand indicators for message identification. It is a security technology that helps in email authentication and building trust with your customers. Consumers today are fearful of phishing, spams, fraud and spoofing, BIMI can help here, it attaches your brand logo to the mail, secures your domain name so that no malicious software can use it to steal your customers’ valuable data.

While the other emails will have a blank space or any generic icon for recognition, BIMI will add your logo to the email setting you apart from the crowd.

With the help of BIMI, consumers will be able to recognize your email instantly. This feature not only increases trust but also the open rates as the email is clearly marked as authentic.

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BIMI & its Features

The approach and working structure of BIMI is similar to that of DKIM, both these security protocols play a role in today’s market. Let us go through some of the prominent features of BIMI here:

• BIMI requires minimal infrastructure.
• BIMI is not dependent on any internet protocol or other services.
• It’s infrastructure is transparent and it is also compatible with other email infrastructures.
• No encryption techniques are added before data transmission.
• BIMI can also be deployed independently and incrementally, regardless of what kind of clients it is working for.

Why should email marketers care about BIMI?

Before we dive into why BIMI is important for email marketers, take a look at the following statistics:

• The US has lost more than $2 billion through email frauds.
• Malicious email detection rose by 9% in 2020 and it is increasing.
• 74% of the organizations experience phishing attack
• 96% of the social engineering attacks are through emails

While so many negative aspects creeping into online channels – How do you think your users are going to trust your email? And, how are they going to recognize your email in first place?

One good thing about BIMI is that it removes the doubts and concerns of a user about the email. It prevents users marking you as spam looking at the brand logo. Marketers using BIMI have a better chance of reaching the primary inbox of their target recipients.

That being said, these brand indicators for message identification are critical to ensure that the brand emails work, the users view them and they are not sent to spam. Although BIMI might not guarantee 100% deliverability, it definitely increases the probability of the reach of emails.

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The impact of BIMI on any modern business:

1. Builds customer confidence

With a brand logo right beside the subject line, the user already knows where the email is coming from. If the subject line attracts the user, the email is clicked. The brand name ensures that the email is not tagged as spam.

2. Improves engagement

As the emails with brand logo are not sent to spam, the chances of conversion from such emails is higher. Users are likely to buy products or services through CTA’s in these emails.

3. It is based on DMARC

BIMI works on the principles of DMARC authentication, which forms a multi-layer framework for an added layer of security. Thus, BIMI is one of the best frameworks to be used for brand email authentication.

4. Visual confirmation

Logo is the proof of any brand and with a brand logo, an email becomes authentic. BIMI helps in visual confirmation and users are more willing to click the email and see what the brand has to offer.

Future of BIMI and email marketing

BIMI helps various organizations enhance their return through a controllable channel, which can deliver a strong payoff with minimal investment. With features like secure global framework for email security, enhanced collaboration between various organizational teams, improved open rates and very few chances of phishing, BIMI promises a good future to email marketers.

As email marketing proves to be a strong communicating channel between consumers and marketers, technologies such as BIMI strengthens this relationship by adding trust and reliability. Modern marketers must embrace BIMI as a core element to their email marketing regimen.