emailrules.today
Stop 4 of 8DeepUnder one second

BIMI

Optional branding — shows your logo in some inboxes if DMARC is strong enough.

Say it out loud

“Our logo next to the message in some inboxes. It is a reward for strong authentication, not a fix for anything.”

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) can display your logo beside messages in supporting clients. It requires DMARC at quarantine or reject, a logo in a specific restricted SVG profile, and — at Gmail — a paid Verified Mark Certificate. It changes nothing about whether mail is delivered.

DNS recordThree prerequisites hiding in one recordPublished valuesscrolls →
Name default._bimi.aurora.com
Value v=BIMI1; l=https://aurora.com/bimi/logo.svg;

SVG Tiny PS only — a restricted profile, not the SVG your designer exports from Figma.

a=https://aurora.com/bimi/vmc.pem

The Verified Mark Certificate. Paid, renewed annually, and Gmail requires it.

And, before any of it counts:
_dmarc must be at p=quarantine or p=reject

p=none publishes a BIMI record that no client will ever act on.

Yours

Nobody does this for you.

What goes wrong

Buying the certificate first. The VMC is the expensive part and the last part; without an enforcing DMARC policy it does nothing at all, and the policy is the part that takes months.

What people get told

The claim. “BIMI improves deliverability.”

Actually. It does not. It is a display feature. What improves deliverability is the enforcing DMARC policy you had to build in order to qualify for it, which is a real benefit that gets misattributed.

The dated rule behind this

A definition is not a citation. These are the pages with the primary source, the date it was published, and what to do about it.

See also

Where this sits

Stop 4, identity gets checked. The receiver works out whether the message really comes from who it says it does.

← BeforeEmail headersNext →Engagement

FAQ

Awkward questions

Who is this actually for?

People who ship email and are too busy to re-read every PDF: week-one marketers, lifecycle/CRM, deliverability, multi-country ops, DTC brands, agencies — on Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Braze, HubSpot, SFMC, or something else. Pick your tool and geos so product-specific pages only appear when they match. EU and UK are first-class filters. Not for people who sell tools about email and need a fake score to demo.

Why only ~40 rules? Isn’t that… thin?

On purpose. A wall of 400 undated “best practices” is how you look busy and still get burned. Every page needs a primary source we actually read. Thin and checkable beats fat and folklore. Europe, bulk inbox rules, measurement honesty, and protocol topics like BIMI/DMARC policy are on the shelf when we can cite them — not every Member State and not every vendor myth. Coverage map lists what we still refuse to invent.

Is this legal advice?

No. If it were, you’d have a billable hour and a longer PDF. This is a dated operator reference written by an email geek. Confirm anything high-stakes with counsel who knows your facts. Same for “will this make me compliant?” — no tool does that. Lawyers and judges do. We say what the sources say and what to do first on Monday.

Why no trust score out of 100?

Because we refuse to invent a number you can’t audit. Fake scores sell seed tests and panic. You get findings, dates, and links. If that feels less exciting than a red dial, good — you’re not the red-dial customer.

Why should I trust you more than my ESP’s blog?

ESPs sell seats. Seed-score vendors sell fear. AI invents citations when nobody watches. We sell nothing today — no pixels, no placement scores, no affiliate — so we can say when a tool is the problem. A human verifies, dates, and corrects in public. Tools may help draft; they do not ship unsourced claims. Check the primary links. Fail that test and leave.

Do I need an account?

No. Filters live in this browser and the URL. Share the link. That’s it. Accounts come later only if they earn it — not so we can nurture you about email.

I’m an agency. Where’s multi-client mode?

We tried a client-name CRM on the setup card. It made the product feel like work before it felt useful. Role filters + copy link + one-page brief (optional PDF title) is enough for now. Complexity comes back when the free shelf is habit, not before.

Is the quiet changelog a bug?

No. Quiet means nothing material moved. We don’t invent urgency so the homepage looks “alive.” Sticky risks still show what usually needs a person when the market is still.