• by Ray Schultz , July 20, 2021

With Google now rolling out BIMI to all Gmail inboxes, providers have been jumping up to offer BIMI products. Beleaguered email marketers might well ask: Why should we bother with this? 

Here’s why: BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) allows brands to display their logos next to authenticated emails. And those logos can drive higher open rates while driving consumer trust, judging by Consumer Interaction with Visual Brands in Email, a study by Red Sift and Entrust. 

On average, open rates jumped by 21% in the U.S. and 39% in the UK when a brands’ logos were displayed with emails but competitors’ were not, the study claims.   

For instance, an  unnamed U.S. investment firm with a logo saw a 6% in its open rate share while a competitor without one suffered a 10% decrease. 

In the UK, an energy provider with a 6% market share saw a 38% increase in opens with logo visibility while a provider with no logo lost 11%. 

You might be skeptical given the lack of names with these use cases. But the developers in general say BIMI raises opens by 10%. 

Gen Z is especially open by the presence of logos. Emails without a logo “negatively impacted Gen Z purchasing decisions by 28%,” the study states. 

Moreover, brands with a visible logo saw 18% more Gen Z opens, while firms without one fell by 10%, the study reports.  “Looking at the data alone, we can be confident that the inclusion of logos on both transactional and promotional emails does positively impact open rates,” the study says.

BIMI compliance is based on use of DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance), the primary email security standard.

Note: Entrust and Red Sift are partnering to help marketers adopt BIMI. For this study, they surveyed 626 marketers in the UK and 400 in the U.S.