How to Get Your Logo Into the Inbox

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This article was first published on July 23, 2025, and updated on February 3, 2026, with new information about the cost and providers of a CMC and VMC.

There are three things every reader sees before opening your newsletter: The subject line; the preview or preheader text, which gives you the chance to share more information about the newsletter; and the name of the person or brand who sent the email.

But in many email clients, there’s actually a fourth thing that a reader might see before opening: Your logo.

Not every inbox shows a logo. Open an email in Gmail’s mobile app, and you’ll see the logo both before and after opening the email. On desktop, the logo only appears inside the email.

That logo, when displayed, offers a key piece of branding for your newsletter, and gives readers one more thing to help your emails stand out in the inbox. That additional branding might be the difference between someone opening your emails — or not.

Does having a logo make a difference in terms of open and click rates? The truth is, there hasn’t been enough independent analysis of newsletters with a logo versus those without. I’ve had dozens of clients set up their logo in the inbox, but external factors — primarily inflation in both open rate and click rate — has made it tough to put a percentage on the impact of the logo.

But the overall trend is clear: Adding your logo usually has a positive impact on email engagement. To me, setting up these logos is an absolute no-brainer.

Taking the next step to get your logo in the inbox can be a bit more complicated than you’d expect, though. Different inboxes have different rules for displaying logos, requiring different file types and even different rules for email authentication. In this guide, I’ll walk you through each step to make sure you set things up correctly.

One caveat before we dive in: You do need to be sending from a custom domain for this to work. If your email address is provided by your email service provider — newsletter@yourname.substack.com, for instance — the steps below won’t work.

Got it? Let’s go one by one through the five different ways to get into Apple, Gmail, and Yahoo inboxes — including three options that are completely free.

The YouTube workaround for Gmail

Getting a logo into Gmail emails on desktop or Gmail’s mobile app is completely free via a surprisingly simple workaround: Setting up a YouTube account.

Create a YouTube account using the exact email address you send newsletters with. (If you send via multiple email addresses, you’ll want to set up accounts for each email address — otherwise, your logo won’t always appear.) Add your logo to YouTube, either as a .png or .gif format — and yes, if you have an animated .gif, it should animate within Gmail.

You don’t even need to regularly post to that YouTube account. Just create the account, add your logo, and wait for the logo to appear in Gmail. Since Gmail and YouTube are both owned by the same parent company, Alphabet, the logo will typically start displaying within a few days.

Setting up BIMI for Yahoo

The YouTube workaround is the easiest of the five options, as it requires no technical expertise to set up. The other four options in this guide do require a bit of behind-the-scenes tech work. Luckily, this is something anyone can do — I promise, you don’t need to be a tech whiz to get your logo into these other inboxes. (You will need to deal with a bit of email jargon, though.)

First, make sure you have two forms of email authentication set up: SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail). These are the two email authentication tools that Gmail and Yahoo started requiring all senders to set up back in 2024, so hopefully, you’ve already taken the steps to add these to your domain. If not, here are instructions for setting these up for a few common email platforms:

• AWeber
• Beehiiv
• Campaign Monitor
• Kit
• Mailchimp
• Salesforce

Don’t see your email platform listed here? Reach out to your platform for a step-by-step guide — every one has resources to help you set up SPF and DKIM.

Once you’ve set up those, make sure you have a DMARC policy in place. DMARC is short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, and it was designed to prevent bad actors from spoofing your domain. (We wrote more about the history of DMARC here.)

DMARC offers three levels of enforcement: None, quarantine, or reject. “None” means that anyone — including a spoofer impersonating your email address — can get into the inbox. The other two will block any unauthenticated sources from landing in the inbox. “Quarantine” will send it to the spam folder; “reject” will block it from the inbox entirely.

Gmail and Yahoo only require a policy of “none,” but to get your logo into the inbox, you should take the next step and change your DMARC policy to “quarantine” or “reject.”

Doing so requires a few next steps:

• If you don’t have a DMARC policy yet, generate your DMARC record using this tool, and start by setting the enforcement level to “none.” The record should look something like this:

v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=none; fo=1; pct=100;

• Then use this tutorial to add that DMARC record to your DNS. (You’ll find the DNS wherever your website is hosted — perhaps via a hosting service like Bluehost.)
• Next, set up a free tool to keep tabs on your DMARC status for a few weeks. Lately, I’ve been recommending that clients use this free tool from Postmark to monitor DMARC. Every week, it’ll send you an email report about the state of DMARC. It’ll show you which sources it knows belong to you, and which it can’t verify. If you find a legitimate source of email that isn’t verified — say, emails coming from your Shopify store — then you need to go back and authenticate those. Do not change your DMARC status before you’ve authenticated all legitimate sources via SPF and DKIM — otherwise, those emails won’t be delivered to the inboxes of your readers.

• Once you’ve authenticated everything, go back to this tool, change the enforcement level to “quarantine,” and update your DNS with the new record. The record should look something like this now:

v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; sp=none; fo=1; pct=100;

Once you’ve done all that, you can finally add a BIMI record to your DNS. (BIMI stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification.) First, you’ll want to create an .svg file for your logo. If you don’t have an .svg file, that’s not a problem — Adobe offers a free .png-to-.svg converter that anyone can use. Once you have that .svg file, this guide can walk through the steps to generate the BIMI record and add it to your DNS.

The good news: Once that BIMI record is in place, Yahoo will start displaying your logo in their inbox. Litmus data from May 2025 says about 2% of all emails are opened through Yahoo, though some newsletters do see a higher percentage of Yahoo emails on their list. Yahoo likely does not represent a huge percentage of your list, but this is still a free step that helps you get your logo into more inboxes. I think it’s absolutely worth doing.

Getting into Apple Mail

Once you’ve set up BIMI, this next logo option is a breeze. Apple now allows you to set up a logo that will be displayed in their Apple Mail client, and they don’t charge anything for you to do so. There are two caveats: One is that it only works on iPhones, and the other is that it does not work for users in every language. Apple has continued to roll out support for new languages, though. Earlier in 2025, this logo option only worked for users whose phone was set to English; now, it works in languages including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

To set up your logo for Apple Mail, you’ll first need to create an Apple Business Connect account. You can do that, for free, via this link.

Once you’ve done that, make sure you have your logo in .heif, .jpg, or .png format, and make sure the logo is 1024 x 1024 pixels or larger. If your org sends from a subdomain, make sure you read these guidelines from Apple to make sure you’ve got everything straight before you add everything to Apple Business Connect.

Then you can follow these steps to add your logo to Apple Business Connect. Apple will review your submission, and either approve or reject it, within seven business days. Most Inbox Collective clients have seen the logo appear within just a few days of getting Apple approval.

Using a Common Mark Certificate

There are two more options for getting your logo into the inbox, but they both come at a cost.

The first — and less valuable option, in my opinion — is the CMC (Common Mark Certificate). Your logo doesn’t need to be trademarked to get a CMC, but you do have to apply for a CMC through a company called DigiCert, and you do need to go through a series of steps, including getting some paperwork notarized. The approval process typically takes weeks, not days, and your logo will only display in Gmail or Yahoo inboxes. Then there’s the cost: As of this writing, DigiCert is charging $1,236 per year for the certificate, and you have to pay to renew the certificate every year. But if you use this link and add promo code INBOXCOLLECTIVE10 at checkout, you’ll get 10% off the purchase price of a CMC.

What’s the value of a CMC, especially if you can get your logo into Gmail or Yahoo without it? There are a few things I find valuable about the CMC at the moment. Once you have the CMC, it applies to every email address in your domain. For instance, you might send newsletters from one email address but marketing emails from another. The CMC would cover both.

The other: The YouTube workaround isn’t foolproof. It often works, but it can also be glitchy. Having a CMC means you don’t have to worry that your logo might suddenly disappear from inboxes.

If you’re a mid-size or larger org, there’s very little harm in purchasing a CMC — there’s clear value, and the cost shouldn’t be prohibitive for you.

You can learn more about the CMC and apply for one via this guide.

Using a Verified Mark Certificate

The other certificate option is called a VMC (Verified Mark Certificate), and it’s a more interesting option for one reason: Gmail and Yahoo will show a verified checkmark alongside the logo for any brand that has a VMC, like this.

That checkmark only appears after a reader opens the email, but it’s still an extra bit of authentication that proves that your emails are legitimate. In a world where readers are increasingly worried about protecting their data, seeing that checkmark is a sign that they can trust you and your brand.

The catch is that you must first have a trademarked logo from one of about a dozen trademark offices. (Here’s the list of approved ones.) That means that, unfortunately, many newsletters or businesses aren’t even eligible for a VMC.

Like with the CMC, the process to acquire one of these certificates is lengthy, and there is an additional annual cost, too. DigiCert charges $1,668 per year for a VMC, but the promo code – INBOXCOLLECTIVE10 — will work on the VMC as well. Use it at checkout and you’ll save 10% on purchase price of a VMC.

I’ve written more about the VMC in this article.

My take: If you’re a mid-size or large brand with a trademarked logo, getting a VMC should be an easy decision. You’ll get your logo in the inbox, plus the checkmark, too. I’ve recommended the VMC to my larger clients — the cost is reasonable for any brand with millions of dollars in revenue, and there’s clear value beyond what you can get with the YouTube workaround for Gmail or BIMI for Yahoo.

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