Braze Japan Celebrates 2nd Anniversary and Offers New Marketing Transformation

In November 2022, Braze Japan celebrated its second anniversary. I believe the speed of our growth over the past year has been an exciting achievement.

From November last year to November 2022, our team has grown from 15 members to 35. In the same time frame, the number of customers we work with has risen from under 10 a year ago to a total of 45. At the same time, we’ve also seen the number of monthly active users for our Braze Japan customers from 23 million to 100 million, an increas of more than 4X. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that most Japanese users have already received some kind of message that was sent via Braze.

Braze has helped marketing departments successfully meet these needs, especially in the eCommerce, retail, and restaurant industries, and has accumulated a wealth of relevant knowledge. We believe our know-how and insights will be of great significance in solving the challenges faced by Japanese companies to establish new customer contact points, to understand their customers, and to improve their brand image going forward.

We have also seen a strong change when it comes to the impression our clients have of us. Only a year ago, we had to start our business meetings by explaining what Braze was. Now, on the contrary, our brand recognition has improved to the extent we get people reaching out to us because they are specifically interested in Braze. We are now in the midst of a virtuous cycle in which the success of one customer can lead to the growth of the next.

As our business in Japan has grown, we have had more and more opportunities to sit down with CMOs and CPOs to discuss their vision for Braze. The question that often comes up is about the Braze vision: What is our goal and what value does it provide?

Let's start with what we consider to be a key marketing challenge: Many marketers are regularly coming up with new ideas to improve their marketing programs, but typically only a small fraction of these ideas can actually be executed on. One reason for this is the challenges associated with the technologies they’re using.

Silos, data decentralization, and issues around access—even those who adopted digital early—contribute to difficulties when it comes to analyzing data, formulating a plan, and executing it. This is a reason why seemingly countless ideas are abandoned without being realized.

Furthermore, the maintenance of this data and the implementation of new marketing ideas often requires either self-acquisition of advanced IT skills (SQL, programming, etc.) or continued use of outside engineering, often at a high cost. It is extremely difficult to pick up IT skills on top of your daily work, and it is also extremely difficult to raise large engineering fees—so the result can be the disappearance of countless ideas.

Japanese marketers face an additional challenge: Periodic transfers based on membership-based employment. It is extremely difficult to acquire professional skills in an environment where you are regularly transferred to a different department within a few years of arrival.

Our goal is to help solve those very multilayered issues. We want to provide a digital platform that can significantly reduce the hours required to create a working environment and free up marketers' creativity while reducing the strain on the technical teams that support them.

Supporting Marketers with Both Technology and Knowledge

The difference between a year ago and today goes beyond changes in our business and the market—Braze Japan's strategy has evolved as well. When we first entered the market, we had to prove the value Braze could provide, but now that the market recognizes that value, we are focused on executing the promise our technology offers.

In the future, we intend to bring our services to a wider range of customers throughout Japan through the use of data and technology that meets industry and sector needs. We will continue to provide strong support to Japanese marketers in terms of both technology and knowledge, and to assist with the digital transformation of marketing departments that many companies are facing.

We look forward to the new growth of Braze Japan in its third year!