What is a VMC?
A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) is a digital certificate that allows organisations to display their registered logo directly in their customers’ inboxes, alongside authenticated emails. When combined with DMARC enforcement, a VMC gives email recipients a visual confirmation that the email truly comes from your brand. In practice, this means your official logo is shown in supported mailboxes (such as Gmail and Apple Mail) whenever you send messages.
How Emails are Displayed after VMC implementation:
Left shows email without VMC. Right shows email with VMC.
Why Should Brands Use a VMC?
1. Protect Your Customers from Phishing
Email remains the number one attack vector for cybercriminals. By displaying your verified logo, a VMC makes it much harder for scammers to impersonate your brand. Customers immediately see the difference between a legitimate message and a suspicious one, reducing the risk of phishing and fraud.
2. Increase Trust and Engagement
Studies show that trusted visual cues, like a recognised logo, boost open rates and engagement. A VMC reassures your customers at first glance, building stronger trust in your digital communications.
3. Strengthen Your Brand
Every email becomes an opportunity to reinforce your brand identity. Instead of a generic sender icon, your protected trademark is front and centre in the inbox, making your brand more visible and professional.
How to tell if a logo in email is VMC-authenticated
Here are Gmail examples you can verify yourself. The blue tick indicates VMC authentication from a Certificate Authority.
How Brandsec Supports VMC Adoption
For many of our clients, the motivation to adopt VMC is not just about brand visibility, but about making their customer communications safer and more resilient to abuse. At brandsec, we see VMC as a natural extension of broader brand protection, one that closes a long-standing gap in email security.
We work with GlobalSign, a trusted Certificate Authority, to ensure that the process of obtaining and deploying a VMC is straightforward. This involves validating your trademarked logo, ensuring your DMARC policy is properly enforced, and issuing the certificate that allows your logo to appear in inboxes. The focus is on practical implementation, so that your security and brand protection measures work seamlessly in the background while your customers simply experience the benefit.
By embedding VMC into your brand protection strategy, we help reduce phishing risks, build confidence in your communications, and ensure that your brand remains a trusted presence in the digital environment. For clients who already invest in protecting their customers, VMC is another important safeguard that strengthens that trust.
Ready to add VMC to your inbox experience? Get in touch with brandsec and we’ll take care of the setup.
About brandsec
brandsec is a team of highly experienced domain name management and online brand protection experts. We provide corporate domain name management and brand enforcement services, helping brands eliminate phishing platforms across the internet. Supporting some of the largest brands in the region, we offer innovative solutions to combat threats across multiple industries.
