Senior Manager, Performance Marketing (6 month contract)

Description

Here at Rakuten Kobo Inc. we offer a casual working start-up environment and a group of friendly and talented individuals. Our employees rank us highly in terms of commitment to work/life balance. We realize that for our people to be innovative, creative and passionate they need to feel valued and supported.

If you're looking for a company that inspires passion, personal, and professional growth - join Kobo and come help us on our mission of making reading lives better.

The Role:

We are seeking a Senior Manager, Performance Marketing to lead marketing measurement and performance optimization across Kobo's global marketing organization.

This is a highly strategic and hands-on role responsible for support our performance marketing strategy and how this strategy is measured, understood, and optimized across acquisition, retention, CRM, ecommerce, subscriptions, and lifecycle marketing.

The ideal candidate combines deep performance marketing and analytical expertise with strong commercial acumen, translating complex data into actionable marketing decisions that improve customer acquisition efficiency, retention, conversion, and lifetime value.

Why This Role Matters

This role will be critical to helping Kobo scale efficiently by improving how we measure performance, understand customer behavior, allocate investment, and optimize the full customer lifecycle. Success in this role will directly impact acquisition efficiency, retention performance, customer lifetime value, and overall business growth.

Key Responsibilities:

Lead Marketing Measurement Strategy

• Own the end-to-end marketing measurement framework across the customer lifecycle, from acquisition through retention and re-engagement
• Develop and evolve attribution models to better understand channel contribution and optimize investment allocation
• Partner with the Senior Director on media mix modeling, incrementality testing, experimentation frameworks, and marketing performance diagnostics
• Establish marketing KPI frameworks across paid acquisition, CRM, ecommerce conversion, subscription health, retention, churn, customer lifetime value, and ROAS

Drive Performance Optimization

• Partner closely with media, CRM and ecommerce teams to identify performance gaps and growth opportunities
• Analyze funnel performance across paid media, site conversion, checkout, onboarding, subscription flows, and retention journeys
• Support budget allocation, scenario planning, forecasting, and performance investment decisions

Insight Delivery

• Deliver clear, executive-ready dashboards, reporting, and performance storytelling
• Translate complex data into concise recommendations for leadership and cross-functional stakeholders
• Proactively surface trends, opportunities, and risks
• Build a culture of data-driven decision making across the marketing organization

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner with product, data engineering, BI, finance, growth, and executive leadership to align business metrics and measurement frameworks
• Work with technical teams to ensure analytics implementation, tagging integrity, attribution quality, and data governance
• Champion consistency in measurement across channels, teams, and regions

Skills & Experience

Required Experience

• 8+ years in marketing analytics, growth analytics, performance marketing analytics, ecommerce analytics, or related roles
• Proven experience leading marketing measurement strategy in a digital consumer business
• Deep expertise in acquisition, retention, ecommerce conversion and lifecycle performance
• Experience working across subscription, ecommerce, or high-growth digital business models

Technical Expertise

Hands-on experience with:

• Google Analytics 4
• Google Tag Manager
• Paid media platforms (Google Ads, Meta, DSP/programmatic platforms)
• Attribution and measurement tools (including SuperMetrics)
• CRM and lifecycle marketing platforms
• Experimentation / A/B testing platforms
• BI / visualization platforms (Looker, Tableau, Power BI, or equivalent)
• SQL and advanced data analysis
• Subscription, ecommerce, and cohort analytics tools

Strong understanding of:

• Multi-touch attribution
• Media mix modeling
• Incrementality testing
• Customer lifetime value modeling
• Cohort analysis
• Churn analysis
• Funnel optimization
• Marketing forecasting and scenario modeling

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Strong executive communication and storytelling skills
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders through insight and commercial thinking
• Strategic mindset with strong business acumen
• Highly collaborative cross-functional leadership style
• Comfortable moving between strategy and execution
• Strong problem-solving orientation with a bias for action

The Perks:

• Flexible hours and hybrid remote working environment
• Four extended long weekends in the summer
• Weekly Kobo Spark sessions

About Rakuten Kobo Inc.

Rakuten Kobo Inc. is the world's digital bookseller created by and for booklovers. Owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten Group, Inc. and headquartered in Toronto, Rakuten Kobo's millions of worldwide users can read anytime, anywhere, and on any device. With a mission to make reading lives better for all, Rakuten Kobo connects readers to stories using thoughtful and personalized curation of eBooks and audiobooks, and the best dedicated eReaders and apps for reading. With the singular focus of making reading lives the best they can be, Kobo's open platform allows people to fit reading into more moments in their busy lives. To learn more about Rakuten Kobo, visit Kobo Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Accessibility accommodations for candidates with disabilities participating in the selection process are available on request. Any information received related to accommodation needs of applicants will be addressed confidentially.

Rakuten Kobo would like to thank all applicants for their interest in this role however only qualified candidates will be shortlisted.

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