6 Updates to Know About Mark Certificates and BIMI
1 vote, average: 5.00 out of 51 vote, average: 5.00 out of 51 vote, average: 5.00 out of 51 vote, average: 5.00 out of 51 vote, average: 5.00 out of 5 (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5, rated)
Loading...

6 Updates to Know About Mark Certificates and BIMI

How widely adopted is the BIMI standard across the email industry? Here are the latest updates and research highlights you should know…

Brand indicators for message identification (BIMI) is an email authentication standard that enables your favorite brands to display their snazzy logos in the sender field of emails. This visual clue assures recipients that an email legitimately came from a specific domain (i.e., the logo won’t display unless the email and logo are verified).

Explore data from recent industry studies and updates that underscore the importance of email brand identity to the success of your marketing and outreach initiatives.

Let’s hash it out.

TL;DR: What to Know about BIMI & Mark Certificates in >20 Seconds

  1. The percentage of domains using BIMI jumped 53.45% over 12 months
  2. Apple doesn’t support Entrust certificates issued on or after Nov. 15, 2024
  3. Nearly 95% of consumers rank an email sender’s name/brand as the top engagement factor
  4. 78% of consumers mark emails as spam based on appearance
  5. More than half (51.52%) of email marketers plan to or have implemented BIMI
  6. BIMI support is growing among email providers

1. BIMI Adoption Among Domains Is Up More Than 53%

Recent data from Wombatmail shows that businesses are warming up to BIMI. The adoption of BIMI by domains increased by 53.45% from September 2023 to September 2024. This means 22,631 of the top 10 million domains had published BIMI records as of September 2024. 

But does this mean that all of these brands that are using BIMI are displaying their logos in Gmail and other major platforms automatically? Not necessarily. Most mail services require you to also have a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) or a Common Mark Certificate (CMC), in the case of Gmail, before your logo will display.

Here’s are some examples of brands that are using BIMI with Verified Mark Certificates and Common Mark Certificates:

Infographic relating to brands that have implemented BIMI and are using either a Common or Verified Mark Certificate
Image caption: An infographic of the brands using BIMI paired with either a CMC or VMC.

2. Apple Discontinues Support for Entrust-Issued Digital Certificates

In the rush leading up to the U.S.’s Thanksgiving holiday, Apple quietly announced it would no longer trust or support several types of digital certificates issued by Entrust on or after Nov. 15, 2024.

According to Apple: “Certificates issued on or before the effective date are expected to function until the natural expiration of the certificate.”

The company’s move is the latest in the series of distrusts that occurred over the last half of the year. More specifically, Apple will no longer trust any SSL/TLS, S/MIME, Timestamping, and BIMI Mark Certificates issued by Entrust public roots on or after Nov 15, 2024.

Takeaway: Since DigiCert and Entrust are the only two CAs that issue Mark Certificates, it means that you now need to get a VMC issued by DigiCert to make BIMI logos appear in Apple systems. 

Read more about the changes in Apple’s official announcement.

3. Sender’s Name & Brand Rank as Top Factors for Email Engagement

Mailjet’s report “The Path to Email Engagement 2024” data shows that 94.5% of consumers ranked recognizing the sender’s name or brand name as “very important” or “somewhat important” when deciding whether to open an email.

A graph illustrating Mailjet's survey results data regarding a sender's name or brand as a top email engagement decision factor
Data source: Mailjet “The Path to Email Engagement 2024” report.

Read more about Mailjet’s data in the company’s The Path to Email Engagement 2024 report.

4. Consumers Are Increasingly Intolerant of Email Spam

Data from ZeroBounce’s Email Statistics Report for 2025 shows that 78% of survey respondents across four continents said they’d mark emails as spam simply if they looked the part. This means that if your legitimate outreach emails have certain spam-like qualities, then three in four users will banish your messages to the farthest reaches of their inboxes. 

Is this a big issue? Yes, particularly when you consider that many ESPs automatically flush spam messages after ~30 days and ZeroBounce’s research indicates that:

  • only three in four users bother to check their spam folder at all, and
  • of those respondents, 27% say they only check the folder a few times a year.

Read more about ZeroBounce’s email statistics research.

5. Half of Companies’ Email Marketers Are on Board with BIMI

Survey data from Validity’s 2024 Email Marketing Pulse report shows that more than half of the email marketer respondents indicate that they plan to or already have implemented BIMI:

A graph illustration showing Validity's data regarding organizations' progress or plans to implement BIMI
Data source: Validity’s 2024 Email Marketing Pulse Report.

Read more about Validity’s research relating to email marketing factors.

But how open are email service providers (ESPs) to implementing this framework?

6. BIMI Support Is Also Growing Among Email Service Providers

A screenshot from bimigroup.com of the current email service providers that support BIMI as of Jan. 29, 2025
Image caption: A screenshot of the existing list of email providers that do and don’t support the BIMI standard.

When we first talked about BIMI and Mark Certificates back in 2019, Yahoo and Google* were the only email service providers that supported the standard. The list expanded to include AOL, Fastmail, and Netscape as of October 2020.

*Google announced its plans to launch a BIMI pilot in 2020.

Since that time, several other major email service providers have boarded the BIMI train. There’s a dozen confirmed BIMI-supporting email service providers as of when this article was published on Jan. 29, 2025 (see the graphic to the right).

In addition to the list above, there are some other ESPs that spamresource.com lists as supporting BIMI:

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. We will only use your email address to respond to your comment and/or notify you of responses. Required fields are marked *

Captcha *

Author

Casey Crane

Casey Crane is a regular contributor to and managing editor of Hashed Out. She has more than 15 years of experience in journalism and writing, including crime analysis and IT security. Casey also serves as the Content Manager at The SSL Store.