Background and Objectives of Implementing uSonar
In its medium-term management plan, Chugin Financial Group has established a policy for its corporate division to "pursue timely approaches tailored to the customer's stage and management challenges." To achieve this, the group aims to advance data utilization and establish a system for identifying latent needs through non-face-to-face channels. As part of this initiative, the group is promoting corporate email marketing. In striving for "One-to-One Marketing" to deliver precise information to each customer, the group faced a challenge: the corporate email addresses in its possession lacked detailed information such as department or job title, making it impossible to analyze needs based on roles or areas of responsibility and, consequently, preventing the delivery of optimized marketing emails. To resolve this, the group focused on the business card information exchanged by sales representatives. After evaluating business card management tools to utilize this data for sales across the entire group, they adopted the corporate information and business card management application "mSonar" for 5,000 IDs. Furthermore, they implemented "PLANSonar" to enable the delivery of personalized emails for "One-to-One Marketing" and to facilitate sales activities based on the latent needs of corporate clients.
Key Reasons for Adopting uSonar
After comparing our options with other services, we decided to adopt uSonar based on the following points.
1. High Comprehensiveness of LBC and Efficiency in Data Centralization
The corporate database LBC*, provided by uSonar, is a comprehensive business database covering 12.5 million entities nationwide, ranging from large corporations to sole proprietorships. Since mSonar is a tool equipped with this LBC database, we determined that it would enable more multifaceted sales activities utilizing corporate data, rather than simply digitizing business cards. Furthermore, we valued the fact that LBC serves as a common key when centralizing data scattered across multiple systems, enabling efficient data matching. We expect this to be utilized in data integration across the various companies of Chugin Financial Group, Inc.
2. Sales Activities That Capture Potential Customer Needs and Timing
Chugin Financial Group, Inc. also adopted PLANSonar to realize sales activities based on potential customer needs that were previously difficult to grasp. By creating lists from business card information consolidated in mSonar, we can use PLANSonar to assign attributes including basic information such as industry and company size, as well as qualitative information such as customer interests, including 'companies interested in DX' or 'companies active in decarbonized management.' This enables the delivery of personalized emails to each customer. Additionally, we valued the ability of PLANSonar to utilize intent data, which allows us to capture potential customer needs and timing, thereby creating more highly accurate targeting lists.
3. Proven Results Experienced During the Trial
During the trial conducted before the full adoption of uSonar, we combined registered business card data with the interest information from uSonar's corporate database to create lists and send emails. The results showed higher email open rates and content click-through rates compared to our previous campaigns. This confirmed that utilizing uSonar services would bring us closer to realizing One-to-One marketing. Furthermore, we conducted an mSonar trial at branches of The Chugoku Bank, Ltd. Many corporate sales representatives reported that the information provided by mSonar was highly useful for gathering intelligence on new business prospects, confirming that uSonar's corporate database can be effectively utilized in the field.

Future Outlook
Moving forward, we will advance the sophistication of our intent data utilization, such as incorporating interest information inferred from the web behavior of our business partners. This is expected to improve the precision of our customer approach by enabling us to provide information tailored to each customer at the appropriate time. Additionally, Chugin Financial Group, Inc.'s medium-term management plan aims to strengthen our group sales structure. By leveraging LBC to centralize customer data across the group, we will promote more comprehensive and efficient sales activities. Furthermore, we anticipate building a more robust data utilization infrastructure by integrating the Salesforce environment with uSonar.
Comment from Toshihito Mohri, Executive Officer, General Manager of Group Sales Strategy Department, Chugin Financial Group, Inc.
The Chugin Group aims to provide comprehensive financial services as a co-creation partner for our regional customers. To realize service delivery tailored to the specific management challenges of each customer, we believe it is essential to advance the sophistication of our data utilization. By leveraging the corporate database of uSonar, we expect to grasp customer needs that were previously unnoticed and improve the precision of our approach in future sales activities. Furthermore, we look forward to utilizing LBC in the future to centrally manage customer information across the entire group, thereby establishing a system that allows us to respond to customer needs as a unified group.
About Chugin Financial Group, Inc.
Chugin Financial Group, Inc. is the holding company of The Chugoku Bank, Ltd., which is headquartered in Okayama Prefecture. Since its establishment in 1930, The Chugoku Bank has developed alongside the local community. In 2022, the Chugin Financial Group was established. The Chugin Group aims to transform into a corporate group that practices problem-solving by standing close to each individual customer, with the goal of building a sustainable business model that develops mutually with the local community and our customers.
Site URL: https://www.chugin-fg.co.jp
Note: LBC is a corporate data service provided by uSonar that assigns an 11-digit management code to business establishments across Japan. It centrally manages a wealth of corporate attribute information, such as industry, sales, profit, number of employees, and fixed IP addresses. By matching client data with LBC, it enables precise targeting by excluding existing business partners.
https://usonar.co.jp/service/usonar/index.php#serviceLbc
Contact for Inquiries: Public Relations Department, uSonar Co., Ltd. (Hiyama/Sawada)
Email: pr@usonar.co.jp
Article Publication Date: February 5, 2026