New study shows that VMC boosts email open rates by up to 39%

VMC or Verified Mark Certificate, allows companies to show a validated brand logo to email recipients. A recently published report* shows that VMC is not only affecting email open rates, but also brand awareness and buying behavior.

Email continues to be the most widely used communication channel for businesses and organizations. There are approximately 316 billion emails sent daily**, making VMC a much-anticipated improvement in email marketing. In short, VMC verifies the authenticity of e-mails while also strengthening the brand. It is a new important tool for companies to improve their return on investment, but also to strengthen brand security and to combat e-mail counterfeiting, so-called phishing.

The report produced by Red Sift deals with BIMI, which is a standard that attaches a brand's logo to an authenticated email. The VMC is the certificate that verifies the authenticity of the logo.

Here are 5 key conclusions from the report

1. When a logo becomes visible in the recipient's inbox, consumer interaction increases. Companies that do not quickly obtain and implement a VMC risk losing market share.
2. VMC boosts greater customer interaction regardless of whether the brand has high recognition or not.
3. Rendering the logo in email inboxes increases the company's market value and ROI. The report clearly indicates that open rates and online purchases are increasing with VMC.
4. The presence of a logo has the greatest impact on younger audiences, a fact which likely will accelerate the establishment of VMC as the future standard.
5. The colors and attributes of the logo affect the recipient's ability to identify the specific brand over another one.

Companies that do not quickly implement VMC risk losing market share. It's a certified way to increase consumer interaction

The study on which the report is based was conducted in the United States and Great Britain. It showed that when a well-known logo was displayed in the inbox, the email open rate increased by 21% in the US and 39% in the UK.

The greatest increase in interaction occurred when a completely unknown logo was used as a checkmark. Among UK users, that email received up to 62% greater interaction.

Source: https://www.mailhardener.com/kb/bimi

Can a logo really make consumers buy more?

To investigate whether VMC in fact generates more business opportunities, two companies were subjected to a test: a market-leading American food chain which holds half of the total market share versus one of its competitors. In the test the market leader did not display its logo in the email, which led to a decrease in sales of 24 percent, while the competitor included its logo and as a result earned 34 percent more.

Source: Consumer Interaction with Visual Brands in Email

Largest interaction increase among Millennials

Although social media is a dominant force today, the report shows that 78 percent of teenagers still use email***. The study reveals that a logo visible in the inbox has the greatest impact on younger target groups, especially Millennials (born 1981-1996) and Generation Z (born 1997-2015).

VMC is now finally launched in Sweden – become an early adopter and gain huge advantages

Although there are no figures yet on how the Swedish market is affected by VMC, all indications are that we will see similar positive results in Sweden. Now is a golden opportunity to be at the forefront, making sure that your logo is visible in the recipients' inbox, one step ahead of the competition. Read more about Google's launch of VMC here. Or click here to find out how you obtain and implement VMC ahead of the competition.

* Consumer Interaction with Visual Brands in Email

** https://www.templafy.com/blog/how-many-emails-are-sent-every-day-top-email-statistics-your-business-needs-to-know/

*** https://www.lifewire.com/how-many-emails-are-sent-every-day-1171210

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