A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) is a digital certificate issued by a certificate authority that verifies logo ownership. Your logo must be a registered trademark before receiving a VMC.
A VMC verifies that your organization is the legal owner of your brand logo. Using a logo with a VMC helps prevent spammers and other malicious users from using brand logos they don’t own. A logo that is a registered trademark is harder to spoof, or forge, because it’s verified by the trademark organization.
Although a VMC is optional, many email clients, including Gmail, require a VMC to display your brand logo in the inbox.
Step 1: Register your brand logo as a trademark
To qualify for a VMC, your brand logo must be registered as a trademark with an intellectual property office recognized by VMC issuers. If you have a legal team, we recommend you work with them to get your logo trademarked, or verify it’s already trademarked.
Search for your organization's logo on the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) website to find out whether it’s listed as an active registered trademark.
Note: Today, the BIMI standard requires your logo to be a registered trademark to get a VMC. However, the standard is being expanded to include logos that aren’t trademarked.
Step 2: Get a VMC and upload to your web server
After you verify your logo is trademarked, contact DigiCert or Entrust certificate authority (CA) to request a VMC.
To display BIMI logos in the inbox, Gmail requires that senders have a VMC. If you use an email client other than Gmail, check their documentation to find out if a VMC is required to display BIMI logos.
When your VMC is approved, you'll receive an entity certificate Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) file. Append any other intermediate certificates you get from the CA to this PEM file. Upload the PEM file (along with appended files) to your public web server, and make note of the PEM file URL. You’ll use the URL in your BIMI TXT record.
Next Steps
Log into your domain provider and add a BIMI TXT record.
