Apple Branded Mail Setup: Requirements, Logo Rules and Steps

What Branded Mail is

Branded Mail puts your logo and your brand name next to your emails in Apple Mail. Apple describes it as a way to add a brand logo and name to your business emails so they stand out in the Mail app and in iCloud Mail on the web.

It shows on iPhone when the device language is set to English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Spanish or Simplified Chinese. It also shows in iCloud Mail in a browser. It does not show in Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or any non-Apple client. If most of your list is on Gmail, this feature alone will not move much.

It is free. Apple charges nothing for it and does not require a certificate or a registered trademark. That is the whole reason it is worth doing. A trust signal that costs nothing is unusual.

Do this first, because it is the long pole

The Apple side of this is a form. The DNS side is where the work is. Fix email authentication before you touch the Apple Business console, or you will fill in a wizard that cannot approve you.

Apple checks two things on your sending domain. First, DMARC at enforcement. Second, DKIM.

On DMARC, Apple's documentation is specific about the values in your DNS TXT record.

• The v value needs to be set to DMARC1
• The p value needs to be set to quarantine or reject. A policy of none will not pass
• The pct value needs to be set to 100
• The sp value needs to be quarantine or reject, but only if you are registering subdomains and the DMARC record sits on the parent domain

DKIM, and why SPF alone will not save you

Apple states that all emails sent to customers need to be authenticated by DKIM, and that authentication only by SPF is not supported. This trips up a lot of businesses that assume any passing authentication counts.

DKIM is a cryptographic signature added to your outgoing mail. The signature names a domain in a d= tag. For your mail to help you here, that d= domain has to line up with the domain in your visible From address. That is called alignment.

There is a subtle way this breaks. You finish DNS setup at your email platform, DKIM passes, and everything looks green in your reports. But the platform is still signing with its own domain rather than yours. You have valid DKIM and broken alignment. Check the d= value in the raw headers of a real send, not a dashboard status light.

If your marketing email goes out from a subdomain like news.yourdomain.com, verifying yourdomain.com at the top level already covers it. Apple's TXT record on the parent domain allows all subdomains. You only register a subdomain on its own when you want it matched to a different brand or logo, and you register a specific address when you want branding tied to that address alone. A brand can hold no more than 100 domains, subdomains and email addresses combined.

Apple Business Connect is now Apple Business

This matters because nearly every guide you will find is out of date on the name and the navigation.

Apple announced Apple Business on 24 March 2026 and launched it on 14 April 2026 in more than 200 countries and regions. It folds together what used to be Apple Business Connect, Apple Business Manager and Apple Business Essentials into one platform. Apple confirmed those three products would no longer be available separately once Apple Business launched.

Existing Business Connect data migrated automatically. Claimed locations, place card information, photos, organization details and account settings carried over. If you set up a place card before April, it is still there. You are looking for it in a different console with a different menu tree.

The full requirements list

Before you start, confirm every one of these. Apple checks all of them.

• A commercial email domain. Free consumer domains like gmail.com or icloud.com are not permitted
• The domain needs MX, A or AAAA mail records
• Your organization has to be verified by Apple, using two verification methods of your choosing
• Your brand and your brand logo have to be approved by Apple
• Your organization has to own the brand
• DMARC at quarantine or reject with pct=100
• DKIM on all mail sent to customers

The logo rules

Your brand logo is one asset used across Apple Maps, Branded Mail, Tap to Pay on iPhone and Apple Wallet. Get it right once.

Apple's published specifications are precise.

• Accepted formats: HEIF, JPEG, PNG or SVG
• Aspect ratio: 1:1, perfectly square
• Minimum size: 1024 x 1024 pixels
• Maximum size: 4864 x 4864 pixels
• Upload an image with a solid background
• Do not place the logo too close to the side edges
• SVG files must be no larger than 15 MB, be well-formed XML with no errors, use the .svg extension and the http://www.w3.org/2000/svg namespace, and must not contain script tags, animation elements, embedded content, style attributes or data URIs

Why your BIMI logo may not drop straight in

If you already run BIMI, you have an SVG logo built to the SVG Tiny Portable/Secure profile. That file is close to Apple's rules but not identical, and the two systems are separate.

The friction is usually the square. BIMI calls for a square image and a solid background too, so a compliant file is already close. What fails Apple is a slightly off-square file, a wordmark that reads badly at 1:1, or a transparent background. Exporting a clean square PNG at 1024 pixels or larger is usually faster than editing the SVG to satisfy both specs.

Worth knowing: Apple Mail supports BIMI separately from Branded Mail. Apple states that Apple Mail supports BIMI in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS Ventura 13 or later and on iCloud.com, and that BIMI works with Verified Mark Certificates and other forms of BIMI Evidence Documents. So there are two routes to a logo in Apple Mail. Branded Mail is the free one.

The setup, step by step

Sign in to Apple Business, then choose Brands, then Branded Mail.

Select Set Up Branded Mail.

Select your brand, or add one if you have not created it yet.

Add your logo, following the specs above.

Select Add your domain or email address and enter the domain, subdomain or address you send from.

Verify your organization if you have not already. Apple asks for two verification methods here, and you pick them from a list that includes an EIN, a DNS TXT record and an uploaded business document.

Apple gives you a TXT record. Select Copy, paste it into your DNS, and save the change. You can hand it to whoever runs your DNS instead, or select Skip and come back.

Select Verify. When verification completes, select Done.

To add more domains or addresses later, select Add, enter the subdomain or address, copy the TXT record or Skip, then Done. To change something, select More next to the brand name, make the edit, then Done.

How long it takes

Apple publishes several different review timelines and they stack rather than overlap.

Organization verification takes multiple business days and depends on Apple reaching your contact. Brand names and logos can take up to five business days to appear in Apple services. The Branded Mail review itself can take up to seven business days. Apple also has to approve every email name before it can be used.

Plan for a couple of weeks end to end if you are starting from nothing. Organization verification alone can take up to five business days, and Apple gives you 60 days from sign-up to complete it. Nothing here is instant, and there is no way to pay to speed it up.

What this does not do

Be clear about the boundary, because a lot of marketing around email authentication oversells it.

Getting DMARC to enforcement stops someone sending mail that appears to come from your exact domain. That is a real and worthwhile protection. It does nothing about someone registering a lookalike domain, swapping a letter, adding a hyphen, or building a fake Instagram page in your name. Those attacks do not touch your domain at all, so your DMARC policy never sees them.

Branded Mail is a trust signal, not a shield. It makes your genuine mail identifiable in one mail client. It does not remove an impersonator and it cannot stop one.

Approval is Apple's decision. Apple reviews and approves brands, logos and email names, and it can decline. Nobody, including us, can guarantee an outcome from Apple.

If you are actively being impersonated and money is moving, this is not your first call. Contact your bank and file a report with law enforcement before you think about any of this.

Should you pay anyone to do this?

Often, no. Say so out loud.

If your DMARC record is already at quarantine or reject, your DKIM is aligned, and your organization is already verified with Apple, Branded Mail is a short job plus waiting. The console walks you through it. Apple charges nothing. There is no certificate to buy and no trademark to register. Do it yourself and keep the money.

Paying for help makes sense in one situation: your DMARC is not at enforcement yet and you send real volume. Moving a live sending domain from p=none to p=reject without breaking legitimate mail is the hard part, and it is the part where mistakes cost you delivered email. Branded Mail is the easy reward at the end of that work, not the work itself.

Anyone quoting you a fee for Branded Mail on its own, or implying a certificate is required, does not know the product.

Working with us

We are Verified Everywhere, part of JWC Apps in San Diego. We ran this whole stack on our own business first, a hockey apparel store called Bench Clearers, before offering it to anyone: DMARC to enforcement, a Verified Mark Certificate through GlobalSign, BIMI live in Gmail, and Meta Verified on a 52,000 follower Instagram account. We work only through official channels, we never take passwords, ID documents or card numbers, and if we do not think a case can succeed we will say so and decline rather than take the fee. If the DMARC enforcement step is the part you would rather not do alone, that is the conversation to have with us.