Sr. Account Manager - Travel Vertical

Job Description:

Rakuten International oversees 7 businesses with over 4,000 employees globally. The brand is recognized for its leadership and innovation in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment and communications, bringing the joy of discovery and access to more than 1 billion members across the world. Our teams deliver on the company’s mission to delight merchants and customers through innovation, optimism, and teamwork.

Rakuten Advertising provides advertising technology and consumer insights to the world’s leading brands and retailers. Working with agencies and brands around the world, Rakuten Advertising unites technology, client strategy and consumer insights to deliver advertising experiences that drive increased brand awareness and marketing performance. With access to Rakuten’s diverse media properties and audiences, combined with an award-winning performance network and proprietary consumer research, Rakuten Advertising creates the right conditions to reach new customers and sustain long-lasting loyalty.

Job summary:

Reporting into a Senior Manager, Client Services, you’ll manage a portfolio of travel clients to implement a thorough, profitable and efficient affiliate marketing strategy. Grow business revenue through innovative and strong partnerships.

Roles & responsibilities:

Client management

• Managing a portfolio key of clients. This includes managing the team members that work on them and day to day execution of those clients. 
• Ability to build, present and coordinate the delivery of top key clients strategies.
• Using analytical skills to make strategic decisions to help clients meet their goals
• Establish and maintain regular and appropriate communication with the key contact(s) for the client through meetings, emails, calls and support tickets
• Grow revenue from existing client relationships - understand client needs/requirements in order to contact with appropriate product/services information
• Retain existing clients and manage dispute resolution

Team management

• Provide leadership to direct reports, motivate individuals to high performance
• Responsible for the performance development of team members
• Hold weekly meetings with team members to review work flow, help them work through challenges and identify areas they can receive additional support and from whom

Administrative

• Regularly review contracts to understand contracts and billing mechanisms
• Troubleshoot client’s technical issues, and file support tech tickets on their behalf if needed
• Owning revenue and forecasting for own client portfolio
• Maintain documentation of client performance and activities in internal systems

Collaboration

• Work closely with US/AUS/EU internal counterparts to lead affiliate initiatives across territories
• Work closely with publisher services to identify partnership opportunities to grow our business
• Working closely with Analytics’ team to help interpret data and build more effective strategies. Working on 2-4 projects a year with this team to further advance our ability to service and advise the wider portfolio of clients.
• Working closely with the marketing to create materials to support the business as well as push business events.  Working on 2-4 projects per year.
• Work with other channel counterparts to provide full Rakuten Marketing experience to clients
• Plan communication activities for your account’s campaigns, alongside MarCom team
• Developing, maintaining, and extending relationships internally and externally

Strategy and planning

• Work with senior management to execute departmental strategy in line with agreed objectives

Key requirements:

Technical /functional expertise

• 5+ years of digital marketing experience including client service (agency, client or consulting)
• Strong understanding and experience in digital marketing concepts / solutions, particularly Affiliate Marketing
• Experience working within or in partnership with businesses within the travel industry
• BA degree in a Marketing field preferred
• Competent in Microsoft Office programmes - particularly Excel (intermediate) and PowerPoint
• Experience in strong client relationships, reinforced by building trust, advising and upselling
• Good project management skills
• Web literate (tracking analytics and methods)

Personal effectiveness

• Highly organised, self-motivated, good time-management, able to prioritise
• Think creatively, has a problem-solving approach and uses professional judgment
• Proactive - continually looking for ways to grow and improve within own role
• Work well under pressure and to tight deadlines
• Inquisitive approach to continuously learning on the job

Communication skills

• Strong customer services skills: Negotiation, diplomacy, able to translate client requirements into technical specifications
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Confident interpersonal skills

Results focus

• Detail-orientated
• Analytical and Strategic Marketing:  Demonstrate success in measuring results and setting, meeting, and exceeding aggressive quantitative goals.
• Proof that you can set and surpass KPI targets

Teamwork

• Reliable and able to work independently on targets
• A real team player that is able to integrate and work closely with an enthusiastic team

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