My colleague Julie Stuck recently wrote a fantastic overview of the BIMI protocol changes we’ve seen over the past several months.
Today, we’ll do a deep dive specifically into Apple Branded Mail and how this ties in.
Apple has been a serious disruptor of the email marketing world over the past few years. Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), Link Tracking Protection (LTP), the recent introduction of tabbed inboxes, and the deployment of Apple Intelligence have all forced marketers to respond and adapt—with varying degrees of panic.
Now, Apple is at it again with the introduction of Branded Mail, and this innovation is mostly good news. Let’s explain why
What is it?
Email authenticity and security are increasingly important for senders and their subscribers. To that end, Apple’s latest contribution saw the introduction of Branded Mail in October ’24 as part of its Apple Business Connect (ABC) offering. This suite of tools helps businesses manage their presence across Apple’s ecosystem, including Maps, Wallet, Siri—and now Apple Mail.
Similar to BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification), which has already had a major impact on B2C email marketing, Branded Mail now allows senders to add their brand logo and name to their business emails.
Tell me more about ABC
Launched in 2023, ABC is a way for businesses to manage how their brand and business information is displayed across different Apple applications and services like Maps, Messages, and Wallet. It’s a free web-based tool that helps businesses manage and grow their presence on Apple’s platforms. Previously available to traditional brick-and-mortar shops, ABC has recently been extended to online businesses too. Read more about this offering here.
How does Branded Mail work?
To use Branded Mail, businesses must first register with ABC which includes being verified by Apple. They must also meet specific requirements including DMARC (with a policy set to either quarantine or reject), as well as verifying sending domains via a TXT record in DNS, Full details can be found here.
In addition to Apple Mail, the logos can also be used instead of a category icon in Tap to Pay features on iPhones. Logos will start appearing to customers later this year when iOS 18.2 is released. Next year, users will be able to create a branded Business Caller ID too!
Why is it different from BIMI?
BIMI builds on the foundation senders created when they published a DMARC record. This lets them show their logos next to emails in their customers’ inboxes, boosting recognition and trust. While Apple’s iCloud Mail already supports BIMI, unlike with Gmail and Yahoo, the logo only appears after the email is opened, not in the inbox itself.
BIMI also needs a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC), which requires a trademark and can be an expensive process. For Gmail, this has been a pre-requisite for the blue checkmark verification.
More recently, Common Mark Certificates (CMCs) have been introduced. These remove the “blue riband” requirement for a trademarked logo, although the logos should be in use for at least a year. This makes the process cheaper and more flexible, and opens up BIMI to a broader range of businesses, including smaller brands.
By contrast, Branded Email operates only within the ABC community. That said, it’s much simpler to set up than BIMI—we’re talking about two weeks from start to finish. A key difference is the image is displayed in the Apple Mail inbox, so there is no requirement for emails to be opened first. Over 40 percent of all email users use Apple Mail, and the proportion of business users is even higher, so the impact of this increased visibility can’t be overstated.
There are also differences in terms of the logo images that can be used. BIMI requires a vector logo file (SVG format, for example), while Apple uses bitmaps (e.g., PNG or JPEG).
What are the advantages of using business logos in Apple Mail?
Senders who use this feature benefit from increased recognition and trust, increased open rates (up to 38 percent, according to research from Red Sift), improved brand recall, and greater likelihood that customers will purchase the products and services that are being promoted. In turn, these benefits translate into improved deliverability and security.
Apple Branded Mail will rapidly become a standard that customers expect to see from the businesses they interact with. Early adopters will reap the benefits of building stronger relationships with their customers and establishing a competitive advantage in the highly competitive inbox landscape.
Get started!
DMA research shows the single biggest reason why a recipient opens emails is that they recognize/trust the sender. Showing an approved logo, which provides a validated indicator, goes a long way towards achieving this.
Apple now provides senders with a valuable tool to strengthen the relationships businesses enjoy with their email customers, and our closing advice is simple—get started now!
For more expert insights on the changing world of email, tune into our monthly State of Email Live webinar series.