SendGrid and BIMI – SendGrid

This article explains BIMI, how to integrate BIMI, and where Twilio SendGrid can assist in your integration.

What is BIMI?

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a new email authentication standard that helps brands enhance their email program and build trust with their recipients. BIMI also allows senders to display their brand logo in the email recipient's inbox. Displaying this image increases the visibility and authenticity of their emails.

BIMI works by leveraging the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) protocol, which is an email authentication protocol that checks if the email message is legitimate and has not been tampered with during transmission. With BIMI, senders can include a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) in their emails, which is a digital certificate that validates their domain and logo.

When the recipient's email client receives an email with a VMC, it will display the sender's logo in the inbox, provided that the email passes a number of authentication checks, and BIMI is supported by the email client.

Can I send BIMI compliant emails through SendGrid?

Although SendGrid doesn't have any products that directly leverage BIMI, as long as you are sending from an Authenticated Domain, emails sent through SendGrid can be properly aligned with BIMI.

How do I configure BIMI?

BIMI is set up externally from SendGrid and is a multi-step process.

1. Ensure Domain Authentication is setup for your sending domain.

2. Configure DMARC for your sending domain. BIMI requires DMARC configured to a policy of "p=quarantine" or "p=reject". Percent option (pct) must be set to 100.

3. Create and upload your brand logo file:

Your brand logo is a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file that you upload to your domain’s public web server. SVG is an open-standard vector image format. Your BIMI SVG file must follow specific formatting rules.
Your BIMI SVG file must be hosted in the domain which you are sending from.
After you have hosted your SVG file, you will need to create a BIMI TXT record in your DNS settings. This TXT record should contain a reference to the location of your SVG file.

The record should look like this:
```
default._bimi.example.com IN TXT "v=BIMI1;l=https://example.com/logo.svg"
```
In this example, default._bimi.example.com is the subdomain where you want to publish your BIMI record, v=BIMI1 indicates the version of BIMI you are using, and l=https://example.com/logo.svg is the URL of your SVG logo file.

4. Obtain a VMC (Verified Mark Certificate.)

Choose a Certification Authority (CA) that is authorized to issue VMCs. Currently, there are only two authorized CAs: Entrust and DigiCert. You can visit their websites to learn more about their VMC offerings.
Once you have obtained your VMC, you will need to host it on the publicly accessible web server that aligns with your sending domain.
After you have hosted your VMC file, you will need to create a BIMI TXT record in your DNS settings. This TXT record should contain a reference to the location of your VMC file.

The final record should look like this:
```
default._bimi.example.com IN TXT "v=BIMI1; a=https://example.com/logo.svg; l=https://example.com/vmc.txt"
```
In this example, default._bimi.example.com is the subdomain where you want to publish your BIMI record, v=BIMI1 indicates the version of BIMI you are using, a=https://example.com/logo.svg is the URL of your SVG logo file, and l=https://example.com/vmc.txt is the URL of your VMC file.

How can i verify that BIMI is setup correctly?

SendGrid recommends using MxToolbox's BIMI Check Tool for verification of of correct setup.