Director, Partner & Consumer Marketing (Hybrid)

About Rewards Network 

For 41 years, Rewards Network has been helping restaurants grow revenue, increase traffic, and boost customer engagement through innovative financial, marketing services, and premier dining rewards programs. By offering unique card-linked offers, we introduce diners to fantastic restaurant experiences, leveraging advanced technology and data analytics to deliver value to restaurants, diners, and our strategic partners' loyalty programs. 

Our Culture  

At Rewards Network, you'll be part of a driven and diverse team that excels in collaboration, issue resolution, and taking ownership of both personal growth and the company's success. We take pride in partnering with the world's most powerful loyalty programs to drive full-price paying customers to local restaurants through marketing services and flexible funding options. Our engaging and rewarding environment is designed to help you gain your full potential. 

Job Overview

The Director of Partner and Consumer Marketing is the powerhouse behind our strategy and marketing for our consumer offers and industry leading consumer loyalty partner network. This role is at the center of corporate strategy, designing how our core product offering is delivered to our consumers – diners at our network of restaurants – as well as working hand in hand with our Partnerships Team to expand and improve our consumer/member network. You will be personally involved in the marketing strategies for our top restaurant customers and partners – the leaders in Travel, Hospitality, Loyalty Apps and Banking.

This is a key leadership role within our Marketing organization, reporting directly to the Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer and working alongside the Senior Director of Restaurant Marketing and the Director of Creative. You will be part of a fast paced, high caliber team of strategic, analytical thinkers and experienced executors.

This is a hybrid position and requires in-office presence Tuesday through Thursday each week in Chicago.

What you’ll bring to the table: (Responsibilities) 

  Strategic Offer Design & Value Proposition

• Structure promotional bundles: Design the architecture of consumer incentives, determining the optimal ratio of base purchasing power to "bonus credits" (e.g., establishing thresholds like Spend $100 get $20, Spend $500 get $125) to maximize consumer spend.
• Determine reward mechanics: Establish rules for how rewards and offers stack against each other.
• Co-author co-branded promotions: Partner with the restaurant marketing team and directly with our loyalty partners to design exclusive, high-value introductory offers for premium consumer segments.

Financial Guardrails, Margin & Risk Management

• Manage promotion profitability: Partner with finance to monitor the financial performance and budget of all offers.
• Set and govern budgets: Establish strict guardrails for Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV) ratios to prevent margin erosion.
• Forecast demand elasticity: Model how changes to consumer bonus percentages impact weekly credit sales volume and predict downstream impacts on budgets and revenue.

Optimize Deployed Offers

• Build predictive cohort segmentation: Segment the consumer universe based on past purchase frequency, average spend, restaurant preferences, and other personalized data elements to trigger hyper-targeted offers.
• Execute systematic A/B testing: Continuously test variables including discount types (dollar-off vs. percentage-off vs. value-add), visual presentation of offers, and offer copy.
• Maximize member engagement: Manage the member lifecycle to drive engagement, program automated behavioral triggers that detect weakening engagement and inject custom win-back or rescue offers before a diner becomes in-active.
• Analyze promotional lift and incrementality: Comprehensively manage offer performance and spend lift.

Product Experience & Delivery Execution

• Optimize offer presentment: Partner with product designers (UI/UX) to ensure consumer offers are intuitively displayed at critical high-intent touchpoints across the consumer lifecycle.
• Own offer communication strategies: Coordinate push notifications, in-app modals, and SMS messaging templates so that time-sensitive consumer offers reach the user at the optimum time.
• Align offer supply with Consumer demand: Partner with the Restaurant Marketing team and the Partnerships Team to manage custom marketing campaigns and offers for our top tier restaurants and partners; manage regional dynamics to strategically and intentionally allocate marketing and offer spend toward specific restaurants or regions based on demand generation situation.

Partner and Channel Marketing

• Partner Marketing Deliverables: Work with the Partnerships Team to create and deliver channel marketing materials for partners throughout the lifecycle. This includes Business Development prospects, current partner business reviews, product marketing to partners for new product features and functionality, and collateral grounded in consumer data and insights. Design, implement and measure custom marketing and offer campaigns for our partner’s dining members.
• Offer insights: Provide quantitative as well as qualitative feedback on partner offer campaigns and strategies to the Partnerships Team to arm them for their partner discussions and drive improvements and increased revenue across the partner portfolio.

Do you have the right mix of ingredients: (Requirements)

• Exceptional analytical skills and experience managing complex models, testing strategies, budgets, and implementation plans.
• A deep and extensive understanding of the consumer, segmentation, communication, and offer strategy.
• Exceptional ability to understand customer needs, position products effectively, and creatively design marketing solutions to meet customer needs
• Exceptional ability to bring clarity to complex business situations, to apply frameworks to simplify a message, and to define the appropriate analysis to clearly communicate an outcome.
• Demonstrated experience creating clear, sophisticated communications and messaging deliverables.
• Experience interacting with senior leaders; comfortable asking detailed questions to clarify complex situations.
• Demonstrated ability to ramp quickly into ambiguous, in-flight programs, and operate independently within days or weeks, not months.

Education, Certifications and Experience: Preferred

• Bachelor's degree in business, marketing, or related field
• Proven track record of driving sustained revenue growth, scaling cross-functional teams, leading executive-level strategic initiatives and building modern, AI-enabled marketing organizations.
• Marketing expert with 7+ years of experience leading consumer growth, lifecycle marketing, brand strategy and GTM execution.

What you’ll love about us: 

Comprehensive benefits package, which includes:

• This is a full-time, exempt position and the base compensation for this opening in Chicago is expected to be $170,000-$200,000 annualized, depending on level, candidate experience, skills, and other factors. This position will be eligible for an annual bonus program with a 20% bonus target for total at target of $204,000-$240,000.
• Competitive Paid Time Off and company holidays
• Generous dining reimbursement when you dine with our restaurant clients 
• 401(k) plan with a company match
• Two medical plan options- Standard PPO or High Deductible Health Plan (HSA with company match for HDHP participants)
• Partnership with Rx n Go, offering certain prescriptions for free
• Two dental plan options and a vision plan
• Flexible Spending Accounts and a pre-tax commuter benefit program
• Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity Insurance Plans
• Short Term and Long Term disability 
• Company-paid life insurance and AD&D insurance, supplemental employee, spouse, and child life insurance 
• Employee Life Assistance Program
• Hybrid working space in our state of the art office downtown located by the Metra and Ogilvie train stations
• Catered lunches provided on Tuesday's in our Chicago office