BowNow

BowNow (バウナウ) is a marketing automation tool from Cloud CIRCUS, Inc., built for small and mid-sized B2B companies running marketing automation for the first time. Its email side covers step emails, branching scenarios and newsletters sent to a lead database that also tracks each lead's visits to your website, so sales can see who is ready to talk. The homepage headline claims "国内シェア 7年連続No.1" (number one domestic share for seven years running), citing DataSign's web service survey reports for 2019 to 2025, and says more than 16,000 companies have adopted it. A free plan is the usual starting point.

What a sender gets

BowNow's own column on email explains the three email features at the center of the tool, each with a customer example.

Step emails (ステップメール). A series sent automatically on a schedule or when a lead meets a condition, such as downloading a document or filling in a form. One infrastructure services company, which found it hard to reach individual customers by phone, set BowNow to send a thank-you email with customer testimonials one day after a document download, then a campaign announcement and a meeting request three days after. The column says this turned nurturing into a system and brought in replies and quote requests.

Scenario design (シナリオ設計). Branching that changes what is sent and when, based on a lead's behavior or attributes, for example extra information for people who opened an email and a different angle for those who did not. An IT company used the answers on its download form to split leads by readiness: those asking for an explanation moved straight to an "appointment" status for sales, while the rest went to an "appointment prospect" status and received an automatic thank-you and product introduction after three days and product use cases after six.

Scoring (スコアリング). Points for email opens, clicks and website visits, with leads surfaced and flagged automatically once their interest rises. The column is candid that scoring is hard to configure, and says BowNow ships templates so that no complex scoring setup is needed. The homepage makes the same point: templates built from the know-how gained with 16,000 companies mean there is no need to spend months setting up scenarios or scoring.

The template feature has a name, the ABM template (ABMテンプレート). One customer describes it as sorting leads into levels of interest from their behavior logs and showing them automatically on the dashboard, so the sales team can see needs it would otherwise miss. BowNow also offers a company information feature that automatically attaches data from more than 700,000 companies to your leads. To use behavior tracking you embed BowNow's tag on your website; the FAQ says the only other requirement is the basic details on the Cloud CIRCUS account form.

Newsletters in practice

Two case studies in the column show how customers send regular email. Taimec, which designs and makes washbasin counters for hospitals and care facilities, moved to the BowNow Standard plan from another company's email delivery system, where it could only see open rates. It now sends a newsletter twice a month on Wednesdays, pulls the list of leads who clicked a link out of BowNow, and calls them the following Friday or Monday. The column credits the newsletter with inquiries, a referral and an order from a new lead after two or three sends.

A recruitment services company of about 100 people used BowNow Premium together with Cloud CIRCUS's MA consulting service. It split its targets by hiring season, sent consideration-stage emails when each group was likely to be comparing providers and relationship emails the rest of the year, and shared the list of companies that clicked with sales in real time. The column reports about 8 million yen in sales from one send, an open rate of 31%, a reply rate of 7%, an appointment rate of 2.6%, annual orders up from 26 to 42, and 223% of the annual sales target.

The homepage adds three more results: N1 Technologies combined BowNow with an outsourced calling service and gets an average of 20 appointments a month, about 50% of its new sales; Tungaloy turned 760 leads into 115 orders and passed 150% of budget; and Mitsukoshi Isetan switched from another MA tool and more than doubled meetings from trade shows.

Plans, pricing and the free plan

BowNow starts with a completely free plan (完全無料のフリープラン). The FAQ says the basic features are free to use, that paid plans require a separate application and contract, and that nothing is charged automatically. The homepage describes the pricing model as paying for the features you need, as you need them, so you can start with minimal cost. Two paid plans are named in the case studies, the Standard plan and BowNow Premium, and Cloud CIRCUS also sells MA consulting.

Prices are not printed on the pages. The call to action is "まず料金表をもらう" (get the price list first), and the downloadable BowNow introduction document is described as covering the overview, features and pricing plans. One customer quote gives the reasoning behind the free plan: small companies cannot spend hundreds of thousands or millions of yen up front on an MA tool they do not yet understand. Another customer skipped the free plan after trying the product in a demo and signed a contract straight away.

Support

Support is the second of BowNow's four stated reasons customers choose it. Every customer gets a dedicated representative (専任担当) who explains how to use the tool for their situation, and customers on paid plans get a startup program in the first period after sign-up aimed at getting results as quickly as possible. The email column adds video content and regular study sessions. Customers quoted on the homepage mention early onboarding help and customer success staff who suggested content ideas. The FAQ notes that only about 50% of BowNow's customers have a dedicated marketing department, and says BowNow is best suited to people who want to start doing marketing. Free consultations are offered through the contact form, and a separate channel exists for resellers.

Who it suits

BowNow suits a small or mid-sized B2B company, especially one without a marketing specialist, that wants to send nurture emails, see which leads are reading and visiting, and hand warm leads to sales without building scoring rules by hand. The free plan lets a team try that before signing a contract, and the dedicated representative is aimed at first-time users. The site, its documents and its support content are in Japanese. A company that only wants to broadcast a newsletter to a large list gets features it will not use, and one that needs a published price list before talking to anyone will have to download the document or ask.