How to Get Your Logo Into Apple Mail for Free.

When a store buys its domain through Shopify, Shopify writes the domain's email settings for it. One of them is a DMARC record, a short line of text that tells inboxes what to do with mail pretending to come from the store, and Shopify's default sets it to "none": watch, but block nothing. A policy of none meets what Gmail and Yahoo ask of bulk senders. It falls short of what Apple asks before it will show the store's logo in an iPhone inbox.

Apple calls the feature Branded Mail. It puts a business's name and logo beside the messages it sends, in the Mail app on Apple devices and in iCloud Mail on the web. Branded Mail does not send email. A business keeps sending through the tools it already uses, and although Apple Business offers its own email service to organizations based in the United States, Branded Mail does not require it. Branded Mail is part of Apple Business, the free platform Apple launched on April 14, 2026, to replace Apple Business Connect. It is set up under Brands, then Branded Mail. To qualify, a business needs a verified organization, an approved brand and square logo, a commercial email domain, a DKIM signature (a digital seal proving the message came from that domain) on every customer email, and a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject applied to all mail. Apple says its review of a Branded Mail request can take up to seven business days.

Most of that list is paperwork. The DMARC policy is the item that can break a business's own mail. Moving from none to quarantine tells inboxes to treat any mail that fails authentication as suspect, and that applies to every tool that sends as the business, not only the newsletter. The setting is one line in the domain's DNS, the public records that tell the rest of the internet where a domain's mail and website live. Google's recommended rollout for that line starts with a week of monitoring and then raises the policy in steps. For a store still at none, the safe month to finish is January, after the holiday peak.

Where the logo appears

Apple's Branded Mail guide says the brand name and logo show in the Mail app on Apple devices and in iCloud Mail on the web. Its more specific note names iPhone and iCloud Mail on the web, with a condition on the phone: the iPhone's default language has to be English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Spanish or Simplified Chinese. A customer whose phone is set to Japanese or Korean will not see the logo.

Apple's Branded Mail pages list no minimum iOS or macOS version. When Apple announced the feature in October 2024, it said logos would begin appearing to customers later that year, and its images showed the redesigned Mail inbox that came with iOS 18.2. Customers on older software may not see the logo.

A customer who reads mail in the Gmail or Outlook app is outside the feature. Gmail's logo program runs on a different standard, BIMI, with its own requirements, and how to get your logo into Gmail and other inboxes covers it.

Who can use it

Apple's feature availability page lists Branded Mail for the United States, Canada and most other countries and regions where Apple Business operates. It leaves Branded Mail off the list for mainland China, South Korea and Ukraine. For Bahrain, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates, a footnote says it is not available in all countries and regions. The other conditions come from the Branded Mail guide:

• The business has to own the brand. A franchisee needs the brand owner to set it up.
• The sending domain has to be commercial. Apple names icloud.com, mac.com, gmail.com, outlook.com and yahoo.com as domains that are not permitted, so a contractor who sends invoices from a Gmail address cannot use it.
• The domain needs an MX, A or AAAA record in DNS, the records that tell other servers where its mail or its website lives.
• A brand can cover no more than 100 domains, subdomains and email addresses combined.

The DMARC policy Apple Branded Mail requires

SPF, DKIM and DMARC are the three DNS records that let an inbox confirm mail claiming to come from a domain really does, and the guide to warming up an email list explains each one. Gmail and Yahoo require a DMARC record from bulk senders but accept a policy of none, which monitors and blocks nothing. The full list of their rules is in what Gmail and Yahoo require from senders.

Apple's page on verifying an email domain for Branded Mail says the DMARC record must meet three conditions:

1. The v value is DMARC1.
2. The p value is quarantine or reject. If a business registers a subdomain and the DMARC record sits on the parent domain, the sp value, which sets the policy for subdomains, must be quarantine or reject instead.
3. The pct value is 100, meaning the policy applies to all mail. The original DMARC specification, RFC 7489, treated a record with no pct value as 100, and the current standard, RFC 9989, published in May 2026, drops the pct tag altogether. Apple's page still asks for pct=100, so the safe record states it outright.

Apple gives v=DMARC1;p=reject;pct=100; as an example. Its Branded Mail guide adds that every email sent to customers must be authenticated with DKIM, and that authentication by SPF alone is not supported.

Quarantine tells receiving inboxes that the business considers mail failing DMARC suspicious, and Google's rollout guide says such mail goes to the recipient's spam folder. Reject asks inboxes to refuse it, and Google says that mail is never delivered. With either setting, mail forged in the business's name should not reach a customer's inbox.

The risk comes from the business's own tools. A booking system, an invoicing app, a help desk or a review request service that sends as the business but does not sign with the business's DKIM will fail DMARC. Under a policy of none, nobody notices. Under quarantine, those messages start landing in spam.

Google's rollout advice for Workspace administrators moves in stages. It says to run p=none for one week while reading the daily DMARC reports, then apply quarantine to a small percentage of messages using the pct tag, such as 10 percent for a small organization or 1 percent for a large one, and raise it gradually to 100. Apple accepts only pct=100, so Apple's check passes only at the end of that process.

Black Friday falls on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, 2026. A store still at p=none in November would need that week of monitoring and the ramp before Apple's check passes, then Apple's reviews on top. Changing the policy of the domain that carries every order confirmation in the middle of that rush is the wrong trade for a logo. For that store, the better order is to add DMARC reporting now and read the reports through December. In January, after the holiday mail, it can raise the policy in steps and apply for Branded Mail once the record reaches quarantine or reject at pct=100. A store already there can apply today.

Klaviyo, Mailchimp and Shopify Email senders

DMARC passes when SPF or DKIM passes for a domain that matches the one in the From address. The DMARC specification calls that alignment. A marketing platform passes DMARC for the business only if it signs mail with the business's domain rather than its own.

Klaviyo's help center says most accounts start out sending from a shared Klaviyo domain, and that neither the return path nor the DKIM domain matches the From address at the start. Its fix is a branded sending domain, which makes Klaviyo sign the email with the business's own domain as well as a shared Klaviyo one. The same page says DMARC is not required to send marketing email on Klaviyo, so a store can be sending Klaviyo campaigns that fail DMARC today.

Mailchimp's help center describes domain authentication as two CNAME records for DKIM and one TXT record for DMARC, added at the business's DNS provider.

Shopify's sender email settings are under Settings, then Notifications, and they govern order confirmations, other automatic notifications and any marketing sent from the store, including Shopify Email. Shopify says its CNAME records handle DKIM and SPF. Three details from its help center matter for Branded Mail:

• A domain bought through Shopify gets the p=none record automatically. To qualify for Branded Mail, that record has to say quarantine or reject. Shopify says a domain must have only one DMARC record, and multiple records cause validation to fail, so change the existing record rather than add a second. Shopify says the record can be edited under Settings, then Domains, and its help center names Apple's Branded Mail as one reason to change the default. Then place a test order and confirm the confirmation email still comes from the store's own domain.
• If the store opts out of or reverts Shopify's default DMARC record, Shopify rewrites the sender address to a shopifyemail.com address unique to the store. A rewritten address is no longer on the business's domain, so Branded Mail cannot apply to it.
• Shopify recommends relaxed alignment. If the record contains adkim=s or aspf=s, the strict settings, Shopify recommends changing them to adkim=r and aspf=r. Relaxed alignment counts a signature from a subdomain such as mail.example.com as a match for example.com; strict alignment does not.

Consider a hypothetical candle shop that sends order confirmations from Shopify, campaigns from Klaviyo and staff email from Google Workspace, all as example.com. Before the policy changes, all three need to pass DKIM for example.com: Shopify through its CNAME records, Klaviyo through a branded sending domain, and Google Workspace through the DKIM key an administrator generates and turns on in the Google Admin console. If one of them still signs with its own domain, quarantine can send that stream to spam.

To see what a domain's record says now, look up the TXT record named _dmarc in front of the domain, for example _dmarc.example.com, in any DNS lookup tool. Google's free Admin Toolbox Dig is one.

The logo file

Apple's brand identity page sets the specifications for every brand logo in Apple Business:

• File types: HEIF, JPEG, PNG or SVG.
• Shape: square, at a 1:1 ratio.
• Size: at least 1024 by 1024 pixels and no more than 4864 by 4864.
• SVG files: no larger than 15 MB, with no scripts, animation, links, embedded images, style element or style attribute, and no value starting with data:.

The upload screen previews the crop as a square and as a circle, the shapes it takes in Apple Maps and Apple Wallet, and Apple says one crop applies to both. Apple also says the logo appears on every location cover photo, every merchant ID and every branded domain or email tied to the brand, so the logo a store picks for its inbox is the one customers see elsewhere in Apple's apps. A wide wordmark squeezed into a square is legible at full size and much harder to read as a small inbox icon, so a square symbol or monogram usually holds up better.

Brand names and logos are reviewed by Apple, which says they can take up to five business days to appear in Apple services.

How to set up Apple Branded Mail in Apple Business

Apple's guide lays out the work in this order.

1. Create the organization at business.apple.com. The person who signs up has to enter a legal name, not a job title. A business that already used Apple Business Connect can sign in with the same personal Apple Account, which Apple says keeps access to brand and location features but not the rest of Apple Business.
2. Verify the organization. Apple requires two methods from this list: a business ID (a Dun and Bradstreet DUNS Number or an Employer Identification Number), a TXT record on the domain, an App Store Connect app, or an uploaded document such as a business license, sales tax permit or utility bill. Verification can take up to five business days. An organization that is not verified within 60 days of signing up is deleted, along with its data.
3. Add the brand under Brands, then Brand Profiles: name, country or region, primary category and a website that uses https, or a Facebook, Instagram or TikTok page. Upload the logo and send the brand for review.
4. Open Brands, then Branded Mail, choose Set Up Branded Mail, select the brand and enter the domain, subdomain or single address. The root domain covers every address on it and its subdomains; a subdomain such as members.example.com can carry a different logo.
5. Copy the TXT record Apple generates and add it at the DNS provider, then select Verify. Apple allows 14 calendar days to finish this step before the request has to start over, and it advises warning whoever manages DNS early.

The Branded Mail page then shows each domain or address with a status of In review, Approved, Not approved or Incomplete. Removing a domain later removes the logo from all future mail sent from it, and adding it back requires a new TXT record.

When the Apple Branded Mail logo is not showing

Apple does not publish a list of reasons it declines Branded Mail requests. Besides the DMARC policy, two deadlines can lapse while a business waits: the 14 days to add the TXT record and the 60 days to verify the organization. After those, the first things to recheck are the DMARC record and every tool that sends mail as the business.

An approved status does not guarantee that every customer sees the logo. In an Apple Community thread posted November 3, 2025, one user wrote that their company had been verified and every step of Apple's setup showed a check mark, yet after several months the logo still did not appear in iOS Mail. The thread was closed without a reply. One report proves nothing about how often that happens, but it is a reason to check the logo on a real iPhone, set to one of Apple's listed languages, before announcing it.

What a logo in Apple Mail will not do

Apple describes Branded Mail as a way to build brand identity, increase trust and make emails stand out. Its pages make no claim that the logo improves open rates, click rates or inbox placement.

The logo does not move mail out of spam. Whether a campaign reaches the inbox still depends on complaints, engagement and sending habits, and holiday email deliverability covers keeping placement during peak volume. It also does not fix how Apple Mail reports opens. Mail Privacy Protection still loads messages in the background, which the guide to email timing explains.