How to add your logo (BIMI) to emails

Get your brand logo — and, for many senders, the Gmail blue verified checkmark — showing next to your messages. Here’s the real sequence, in order, with the parts people usually miss.

Written & reviewed by the VerifyAnyEmail team · Last reviewed July 2026

You’ve seen it: an email from a big brand arrives and their logo sits in a neat circle where the generic grey avatar usually goes. That’s BIMI — Brand Indicators for Message Identification — and it’s not a Gmail-only trick or a paid ad placement. Any organisation can set it up. The catch is that BIMI is the last step in a chain, and it silently does nothing until every earlier link is in place. Skip ahead and you’ll spend a weekend wondering why your logo won’t show.

The order that actually matters

BIMI has one hard prerequisite that dwarfs the rest: your domain must be at DMARC enforcement. Mailbox providers won’t display a logo for a domain that a spoofer could impersonate, so BIMI simply isn’t evaluated until your DMARC policy is p=quarantine or p=reject, applied to 100% of mail (no pct holding you back). If you’re still at p=none, stop here and finish that first — everything below depends on it.

Once DMARC is enforced, the full sequence is:

  1. Enforce DMARC (quarantine or reject, pct 100). Verify with the DMARC Checker.
  2. Create the logo as an SVG in the restricted SVG Tiny Portable/Secure (SVG Tiny P/S) profile — square, no scripts, no external references. Validate it with the BIMI SVG Validator.
  3. Host the logo over HTTPS at a stable URL.
  4. Publish the BIMI record as a TXT record at default._bimi.yourdomain. Build it with the BIMI Generator.
  5. Get a mark certificate (VMC or CMC) if you want display in Gmail, Apple Mail and other providers that require one — and to get the verified checkmark (see below).
  6. Verify the whole thing with the BIMI Checker.

The logo file is fussier than you expect

You can’t just export any SVG. BIMI mandates the SVG Tiny P/S profile: it must declare baseProfile="tiny-ps" and version="1.2", include a <title>, use a square viewBox, and contain no scripts, hyperlinks, external references or raster images. Providers reject anything that doesn’t conform, even if the DNS side is perfect. Design the mark centred and legible at very small sizes — it renders as a tiny circle. Paste your SVG into the BIMI SVG Validator before you publish; it flags the exact rule you’re breaking.

The DNS record

Publish a TXT record at default._bimi.yourdomain:

v=BIMI1; l=https://yourdomain/bimi/logo.svg; a=https://yourdomain/bimi/vmc.pem

The l= tag points at your SVG; the a= tag points at your mark certificate (leave it off if you don’t have one yet, but note the display limits below). The BIMI Generator assembles this for you.

Do you need a VMC?

This is where the requirements diverge by provider, and where a lot of outdated advice floats around. Some mailbox providers — notably Gmail and Apple Mail — require an accepted mark certificate referenced by the a= tag before they’ll display your logo. That certificate is either a VMC (Verified Mark Certificate, which requires a registered trademark) or, more recently, a CMC (Common Mark Certificate, for logos that aren’t trademarked). They’re issued by a small number of certificate authorities after they verify you control the mark, and they carry an annual cost. Other providers will show a self-asserted BIMI logo (no certificate) — so a VMC/CMC isn’t universally mandatory, but it is what unlocks the big inboxes. Requirements genuinely vary by provider; the authoritative reference is the BIMI Group.

And the blue verified checkmark?

In Gmail, an enforced-DMARC domain with a valid BIMI record and a VMC earns the blue verified checkmark next to the sender name — Google’s visible signal that the sender is authenticated and the logo is certified. It’s the same pipeline as BIMI; the checkmark is Gmail’s presentation layer on top of it. There’s a separate short guide on that: how to get the verified checkmark.

Why it might not be showing yet

  • DMARC isn’t actually at enforcement, or pct is less than 100.
  • The SVG fails the Tiny P/S profile (run the validator).
  • The logo or certificate URL isn’t reachable over clean HTTPS.
  • You’re testing in a provider that requires a VMC you don’t have.
  • Caching — allow time after publishing, and send a fresh message.

Confirm each layer with the BIMI Checker, and make sure the foundation is solid with the Email Health Check. Get DMARC right first and the rest is mostly paperwork.

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