Upside Business Travel

Lifecycle Marketing Principal, Automations & Incentives

Upside Business Travel$185K — $200K *
Consumer Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of experience in Lifecycle Marketing and CRM with proven consumer engagement and retention success in a mobile-first B2C environment.
  • Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business Administration, or related field.
  • Expertise in marketing engagement platforms like Braze, Iterable, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, with hands-on experience in building automation solutions.
  • Strong understanding of consumer data analytics, data architecture, API connectivity, and SQL.
  • Experience in mobile-first lifecycle marketing across various engagement channels.
  • Hands-on experience leveraging AI tools for lifecycle execution optimization.
  • Collaboration skills and proven ability to influence across teams.

Responsibilities

  • Architect and optimize an automated core lifecycle growth ecosystem to enhance customer engagement.
  • Design and implement behavior-triggered personalization strategies to convert consumers.
  • Develop and harmonize the incentive ecosystem aligning bonuses with consumer habits and engagement.
  • Collaborate with data analytics to ensure efficient promotional spending and reinforce consumer behavior changes.
  • Serve as a bridge across functions to support marketing technology projects.
  • Support the deployment of AI-driven lifecycle agents to boost workflow efficiency.
  • Act autonomously on complex projects while mentoring the lifecycle team.

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision coverage starting on Day 1
  • Equity (ISOs)
  • 401(k) program
  • Family planning programs + paid parental leave
  • Physical fitness and wellness memberships
  • Emotional and mental health support programs
  • Unlimited PTO + 10 paid federal holidays + annual week-long Winter Break
  • Flexible work environment
  • Lunch reimbursement for in-office employees
  • Employee Resource Groups
  • Learning and Development stipend
  • Transparent culture
  • Mission-driven organization.
Full Job Description
The Impact You'll Make:

As the Lifecycle Marketing Principal, Automations & Incentives, you will be the primary architect behind accelerating the scale of an automated and hyper-personalized lifecycle growth engine. We are looking for a seasoned lifecycle leader and growth strategist capable of operating at the absolute intersection of consumer psychology, data-driven automation, and active financial engineering.

You'll report to the Director of Lifecycle Marketing, and together you will drive strategy, execution, experimentation and regular optimization on two of the most critical levers for Upside's growth: a full-funnel "core" lifecycle ecosystem tightly aligned with consumer growth goals and the strategic, profitable deployment of incentive bonuses to help evolve consumer behavior.

What You'll Do:

Scale the Core & Drive Multi-Vertical (MV) Ecosystem Growth
  • Architect the Automated Funnel: Lead "Core Lifecycle" work streams, helping us continue to evolve the program into a robust, automated ecosystem. You will personally design, build, instrument, and optimize sophisticated lifecycle automations across onboarding, habituation (M1-M3 retention), reactivation, high-upside viral referral loops, and more. This is a highly hands-on role requiring deep expertise in CRM and marketing automation platforms to create scalable, "always-on" drivers of MAU and retention.
  • Lead MV Crossover (P0 Focus): This will be your most important contribution. Within the core automation framework, heavily feature and prioritize behavior-triggered crossover loops. Design and test personalized journeys explicitly engineered to convert our highly engaged, fuel-only consumers into long-term, high-LTV fuel and food consumers based on geographic proximity and site-level market potential.
  • Advanced Personalization Strategy: Infuse deep 1:1 consumer-to-merchant matching and advanced personalization logic into the core communication infrastructure to maximize conversion velocity.

Integrated Incentive Engineering & Optimization
  • Harmonize the Incentive Ecosystem: Act as a primary growth steward translating the principles of the consumer habit, incentive, & engagement framework across the lifecycle ecosystem. Ensure our offer and bonus ecosystem functions as a coordinated, unified ecosystem that guides consumers toward long-term habituation.
  • Eliminate Subsidization & Drive Efficiency: Partner closely with data science and consumer analytics to isolate true incrementality. Build rigorous control frameworks to deploy strategic bonuses strictly at a consumer's behavioral "inflection point," ensuring promotional spend is the marginal reason for a consumer's next transaction.

Martech Collaboration & Platform Optimization
  • Support Martech Delivery: Act as a critical cross-functional bridge between consumer strategy, engineering, product, analytics, and data science. Pinch-hit and support the martech projects by clearly scoping and documenting the technical data requirements.
  • AI-Enabled Workflow Velocity: Support the deployment and optimization of internal AI-driven lifecycle agents, subagents, knowledge bases, skill bases, and more to accelerate production velocity.

Strategic Influence & Autonomy
  • Executive Business Framing: Function as a trusted, high-visibility partner to leadership teams across consumer, product, analytics and executive stakeholders to shape and impact our commercial growth model by turning abstract lifecycle problems into clear strategic roadmaps.
  • Autonomous Operation: Be comfortable operating independently while managing projects of extreme complexity and high risk while serving as an expert resource and mentor for the wider lifecycle team.


Competencies You'll Need:
  • 8+ years of progressive experience in Lifecycle Marketing and CRM, with a demonstrated track record of increasing consumer engagement and retention within a relevant mobile-first B2C experience, a marketplace brand, or other related industry..
  • Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business Administration, or a related field.
  • Deep functional knowledge in marketing engagement platforms such as Braze, Iterable, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, specifically with hands-on experience building and architecting solutions in platforms. This role requires ongoing practitioner-level expertise and comfort personally building, troubleshooting, and optimizing sophisticated automation programs.
  • Deep understanding of consumer data analytics platforms, data architecture/pipelines, API connectivity, SQL proficiency, and more.
  • Experience developing and optimizing mobile-first lifecycle marketing programs across push notifications, in-app messaging, content cards, and other app-native engagement channels.
  • AI-forward practitioner with hands-on experience leveraging AI tools to build and refine agents, skills and automation frameworks that accelerate velocity and efficiency across end-to-end lifecycle execution.
  • Data-first decision maker with a test-and-learn mindset. Outstanding analytical and critical thinking abilities, and the capacity to interpret data into practical insights and achieve business results.
  • A collaborative mindset with a proven ability to build strong, impactful partnerships across diverse teams.
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to influence and persuade collaborators at all levels.


The fine print:

Location: This hybrid role is based in our Austin, Chicago, DC, or NYC office. In-office attendance is required on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday and may increase based on project-based needs and changes to Upside's in-office policy over time.

Compensation: The U.S. base salary range for this full-time position varies by work location:
  • Tier 1: NYC $185,000 - $200,000
  • Tier 2: Austin, Chicago, Washington, DC $170,000 - $185,000

In addition to base salary, this position is also eligible for equity and benefits.

The final starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.

#LI-Hybrid
#LI-CO1

Benefits:
  • Medical, dental, and vision coverage starting on Day 1
  • Equity (ISOs)
  • 401(k) program
  • Family planning programs + paid parental leave
  • Physical fitness and wellness memberships
  • Emotional and mental health support programs
  • Unlimited PTO + 10 paid federal holidays + our annual, week-long Winter Break
  • Flexible work environment
  • Lunch reimbursement for in-office employees
  • Employee Resource Groups
  • Learning and Development stipend
  • Transparent culture
  • Amazing mission!

About Upside Business Travel

Upside Business Travel is a travel management company that offers a platform for booking business travel. The company was founded in 2015 by Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.com. Upside Business Travel's platform allows users to book flights, hotels, and rental cars in one place. The company also offers a rewards program that gives users gift cards for booking travel. Upside Business Travel has raised over $50 million in funding.
Learn more about Upside Business Travel
Size
100 employees
Industry
Founded
2018

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