Product Marketing Manager

Job Description:

About Rakuten International Rakuten International is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc., a Japanese global technology leader in services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Headquartered in San Mateo, California with more than 4,000 employees worldwide, the Rakuten International business portfolio includes market leaders in e-commerce, digital marketing, advertising, communications and entertainment. We create products and services that provide exceptional value by aligning members and the businesses that want to engage them in a shared community.

About Rakuten Rewards Rakuten is a leading rewards platform that offers Cash Back on purchases from all your favorite brands. By partnering with thousands of brands in apparel, beauty and wellness, dining, grocery, travel, on-demand services, subscription boxes and more, Rakuten helps members save and get more on everyday purchases. Since its founding in 1999, Rakuten has become the largest and most rewarding shopping experience, and its members have earned $4.6 billion in Cash Back just for shopping through Rakuten. For more information, visit Rakuten.com .

Job Summary:

You are a Product Marketing Manager who shapes how Rakuten Rewards tells its consumer story to drive product adoption, clarity, and trust. In this role, you’ll own how Rakuten Rewards’ Refer-a-Friend (RAF) program is positioned, discovered, and shared by our members. You’ll partner closely with Product, Brand, Analytics, CRM/Lifecycle, Organic and Paid Social, and internal media teams to shape the strategy, messaging, and go-to-market approach for RAF across the full member journey. RAF is one of Rakuten Rewards’ most important acquisition channels, making this a highly visible role with the opportunity to shape a critical growth lever and drive meaningful business impact.

Who You Are (Requirements):

• You are known for meeting and exceeding OKRs, and for being a self-starter who is comfortable with ambiguity and able to think big while paying careful attention to detail.
• You have a demonstrated ability to be creative, initiate and launch effective marketing strategies and programs, and thrive in a fast-paced environment.
• You take initiative while appropriately consulting and keeping your manager in the loop.
• You will increase RAF program awareness and successful referrals that result in first-time purchases (FTBs), and create and implement strategic recommendations and tactics to ensure RAF continues to efficiently deliver new members and first time purchases.
• This role requires a unique blend of marketing expertise, business acumen, and relationship management skills.

What You Do (Responsibilities):

Product positioning & messaging

• Partner with senior leadership to develop clear, compelling consumer messaging that communicates both the practical and emotional benefits of Rakuten Rewards and our Refer-a-Friend (RAF) program, articulating our core value proposition and differentiation to drive awareness and adoption for RAF.
• Define the messaging hierarchy across our surfaces (e.g. homepage, RAF landing pages, onboarding, etc.) based off of insights on user needs, motivations, and barriers.
• Personally conduct and document UX audits, map out opportunities and friction in user journey, and competitive analysis to inform positioning and GTM strategy
• Collaborate with Product to shape how we talk about RAF’s incentives and value proposition
• Develop a Paid Incentive Strategy and test program to give more incentives to the right people within our “Joes” cohort, maximizing efficient growth of First-time purchases as well as downstream metrics such as 2nd and 3rd purchase, as well as increasing purchase recency and frequency in past 30 days.

Marketing Campaigns, Owned Channels

• Craft clear and compelling briefs for internal creative teams to develop creative assets, build GTM plans and execute campaigns across key channels for evergreen communications as well as tentpole promotional moments.
• Improve onboarding and lifecycle messaging to boost user activation and retention
• Collaborate on experiments that test positioning, value props, and copy across web, app, and email, and iterate quickly based on what’s working
• Own and evolve our website and key surfaces as a key conversion engine - optimize landing pages, extension promos, messaging, flows

Product/ Internal Co-Marketing launches & enablement

• Partner with Product and Design to ship clear in-product education (onboarding, progress towards $50 minimum purchase, tooltips, nudges)
• Build creative briefs, campaigns, email sequences, and FAQs, to align RAF marketing efforts with broader company shopping tentpole moments, such as Big Give Week, BF/Cyber Week, and Holiday Shopping.

Research & voice of the user

• Brief and uncover key research insights with Consumer Insights, UXR, and Analytics to understand how users perceive Rakuten’s' value and features and opportunities
• Bring structure to product feedback by translating insights into clear messaging opportunities
• Align with Creative, Brand, Product, Design to ensure we’re telling a consistent story

What You Need (Qualifications)

• Bachelor’s degree
• 4–7 years of experience in product marketing, brand marketing, or growth at a consumer tech company
• Experience owning messaging, GTM, and engagement across multiple platforms (web, app, email, extension), with a proven track record
• Thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with high ownership
• Experience running campaigns that improved activation, retention, or feature adoption
• A sharp writer who can translate complex features and ideas into intuitive, engaging messaging
• Comfortable operating across strategy and execution, equally energized by guiding design and copywriting in creative assets as well as conversion optimization
• Thinks in systems, building repeatable assets and frameworks, not just one-offs
• Fluent in testing, iteration, and learning from performance of campaigns and promotions

Five Principles for Success
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team

Rakuten provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. Rakuten considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.

As part of our Rakuten interview process, we encourage applicants to use their own words, rather than AI-generated content. Tell us your story in a way that's personal and authentic.

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the base compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location. The successful applicant for this role will be eligible for discretionary bonus, health, vision, dental insurance, 401k matching, PTO, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), and other employee benefits as the company implements.