• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 29, 2022

With Apple having joined Google, Yahoo Mail and Fastmail in offering BIMI (brand indicators for message identification), this month, 90% of world’s consumers could now benefit from the protocol.

BIMI allows emails authenticated through the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Receiving & Conformance (DMARC) security standard to display their brand logos in emails. But the logos must be validated with a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) from such a firm as Entrust. 

But are brands really up for it four years after the BIMI working group was formed and 18 months after implementation? 

Only 2.2% of 6.6 million apex domains are BIMI-ready -- meaning they have DMARC in place, according to the State of BIMI Readiness in 2022: Room to Run, a study by Red Sift. And even fewer have VMCs. 

Pretty dismal. But the picture changes among 2,380 domains owned by the largest publicly traded companies in the world: 30.4% of those are BIMI-ready. 

Here is how readiness stacks up among the top 10 countries:

• India — 64%
• United States — 58.7%
• Netherlands — 52.%
• United Kingdom — 50%
• France — 47.7%
• Australia — 45.1%
• Canada — 38.1%
• Sweden — 35.9%
• Norway — 35.4%
• Switzerland — 33%

Among U.S. companies in the Fortune 500, 49.9% have a DMARC policy in place. And 51.2% in the S&P are also prepared. 

But fewer of those firms with DMARC are prepared with VMCs: 2.4% of the S&P 500 and 3.21% of the Fortune 500. 

In 2020, the number of VMCs in the Google pilot was negligible. But that was up to 1,000 in 2021, and now almost reaches 1,500 with over 2000 expected this year. 

In contrast to BIMI use in general, 50% of VMCs are now being issued to firms with less than $50 million in revenue and fewer than 250 employees. The retail industry is first, followed by finance and business services. 

Red Sift concludes that “we are adoption spread across both B2C and B2B industries, which shows that BIMI is not driven strictly as a way to reach more consumers. In fact, business services, manufacturing and tech are leading the way among B2B sectors.”