Cuenote FC

Cuenote FC (キューノート エフシー) is an email delivery and newsletter system from YMIRLINK, Inc. (ユミルリンク株式会社), a company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth market that says it has provided email delivery systems as a cloud service and as software for more than 20 years. Cuenote FC sends newsletters, segmented campaigns and automated step and scenario mail, and it is built for high-volume senders: the company describes it as a system chosen by large enterprises that excels at high-speed bulk delivery while also handling measurement and automated processing. The site, interface descriptions and support are all in Japanese, and the company has offices in Tokyo and Osaka.

What a sender gets

The product description sums Cuenote FC up as a system that handles member management, shows campaign results graphically after each send, and offers an API for connecting other systems, covering everything from a one-off bulk send to ongoing email marketing.

HTML email is built with an HTML editor that needs no specialist knowledge, so campaigns with styled text and images can be put together without writing code. Once a campaign goes out, measurement is part of the standard feature set, along with segment delivery and scenario delivery, which the company lists as the functions email marketing needs "を標準で備えています" (built in as standard).

Automation comes in two forms that the company's own blog explains in detail. Step mail sends a pre-written series after a starting event, in the blog's examples a form submission for a purchase or a request for materials: for example a thank-you message on the day, a message on getting more out of the product one day later, and a coupon for a repeat purchase seven days later. Scenario mail decides the next message from how the recipient reacted to the last one, for instance sending more detail or a coupon to people who clicked a link, or resending with a new subject line to people who did not open. Cuenote FC supports both; the blog says it can do scenario and step mail "はもちろんのこと" (as a matter of course).

For analysis, Cuenote FC includes an aggregation tool for RFM analysis, which groups customers by recency, frequency and monetary value of their purchases, so segments can be built from customer behavior rather than only from list membership.

The API for system integration lets a company's own systems feed data into Cuenote FC or trigger sends. The same vendor also sells a Cuenote Mail for kintone product with its own plugin for teams that run their customer data in kintone.

Speed and scale

Speed is the company's main selling point. Its product blurb says a proprietary MTA (sending engine) and know-how deliver more than 13 million emails per hour, a figure it footnotes as an actual result for the cloud (ASP and SaaS) service, and that mail reaches smartphones and mobile phones quickly and reliably. A separate article on the site puts the performance at 11 million emails per hour. The company also states a track record of more than 2,800 companies using the system and 8.9 billion emails delivered per month.

Plans and prices

Cuenote FC is priced on a table by the number of addresses you send to, and the fee stays the same however many times you send. The site says there is no upper limit on the number of sends ("配信数上限はなく送り放題"). The only price the pages give is the entry point: the service is available "月額5,000円から" (from 5,000 yen per month). The full price table sits on the product's pricing page, and contracts can be signed on the web.

A free trial is offered ("無料トライアル"), and the company sends a collection of success stories and product materials on request.

The wider Cuenote family

YMIRLINK sells Cuenote FC as one product in a family that shares the Cuenote name, and several of them work alongside email:

• Cuenote SR-S, a mail relay server for fast, stable delivery, with a disaster recovery option.
• Cuenote Mail for kintone, email delivery inside the kintone platform, with a plugin.
• Cuenote SMS, an SMS delivery service.
• Cuenote Auth, an authentication service.
• Cuenote Push, web push notifications.
• Cuenote Survey, web surveys and forms.
• A Cuenote safety confirmation service for emergency call-outs.

A group company also runs a social media promotion business. For a sender, the practical point is that transactional mail through a relay server, SMS and surveys can come from the same vendor as the newsletter system.

Security and support

The Cuenote FC product section has its own security page, and the company publishes a personal information protection policy, a basic information security policy and a desk for reporting spam or abuse. Support is by phone from the Tokyo and Osaka offices on weekdays from 10:00 to 18:00, and there is a contact form for questions and material requests. The company also runs seminars and publishes a marketing blog, downloadable reports and an email glossary.

How the company positions it

YMIRLINK's blog draws a line between two kinds of tool. An email delivery system such as Cuenote FC specializes in sending large volumes of mail fast and with high deliverability, suits B2C senders with large customer bases, and can be up and running in a relatively short time. A marketing automation tool covers more channels and site behavior but costs more and is harder to run. The company's pitch for Cuenote FC is that a sender who mainly does email marketing gets strong delivery performance at a lower price, which it presents as a better return on investment.

Who it suits

Cuenote FC fits Japanese companies and organizations with large lists that send often: retailers, membership services and B2C brands that mail newsletters, segmented offers and automated follow-ups, and that care about how fast a large send reaches inboxes. The flat fee by address count with unlimited sends favors senders who mail the same list many times a month. Teams already using kintone, or that need SMS, web push or a relay server for transactional mail, can keep everything with one vendor.

It suits non-Japanese speakers less well, because the site, materials and phone support are in Japanese and support runs on Japanese weekday hours. Buyers who want a full marketing automation suite with website personalization and lead scoring will find that the company itself describes Cuenote FC as a specialized email system rather than that kind of tool.