Marketing Leader Candidate - Japan Country Management Department, Travel & Mobility Business(C&M)

Description

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Department Overview

Rakuten Travel Experiences is a department responsible for operating “Rakuten Travel Experiences,” a rapidly growing new business within Rakuten Travel. Since the service launched in December 2021, we have been providing unforgettable travel memories to both domestic and international travelers by offering a wide range of in-destination experiences, including theme park tickets, water activities, and more.

Service website:

Position:

Why We Hire

Rakuten Travel Experiences is currently in a rapid growth phase, driven by the recovery of tourism demand following the COVID-19 pandemic and the revitalization of the inbound travel market. In the “in-destination” travel experience domain, we aim to provide unforgettable memories to both domestic and international travelers, while contributing to the further growth of Japan’s tourism market.

To achieve this, we are advancing our data-driven marketing capabilities to acquire new users, encourage bookings, promote repeat usage, and maximize customer traffic to our listed experience and activity providers.

Our marketing organization currently operates as a lean, high-performing team, covering a wide range of marketing activities including CRM, sales promotions, campaign planning, and user acquisition initiatives in collaboration with other Rakuten services. At the same time, as the business continues to grow, the importance of KPI monitoring, user behavior analysis, dashboard development, and effective utilization of data infrastructure for marketing initiatives is increasing.

In particular, strengthening our reporting framework to support the PDCA cycle of various marketing initiatives has become an urgent priority. This includes building and improving BI environments using DOMO, as well as extracting, processing, and analyzing data using SQL.

For this reason, we are looking for someone who combines a strong marketing perspective with data utilization skills, and who can lead business growth from a data-driven standpoint.

Key Attractions of the Position
- Business and Organizational Growth Phase

You will be joining a rapidly growing new business in the “in-destination” travel experience domain, a market expected to continue expanding. This role offers the opportunity to be involved in a wide range of marketing activities, including data analysis, BI development, CRM, sales promotion planning, performance analysis, and collaboration with other Rakuten services.

Rather than simply creating predefined reports, you will be able to take part in designing the data and marketing approach from an upstream perspective, including identifying which KPIs should be tracked, how they should be visualized, and what actions or initiatives should follow based on the insights.

- Ownership and Organizational Culture
Each team member is responsible for a broad scope of work and is given a high level of ownership and autonomy. In this role, you will be able to contribute end-to-end, from building dashboards using DOMO, extracting data with SQL, designing KPIs, and proposing marketing initiatives based on analysis results, to collaborating with other departments to drive execution.

Another attractive point is that this position sits within the business-side marketing organization, meaning your analysis can directly lead to improvements in marketing initiatives and revenue growth. The team has a culture of moving quickly and driving continuous improvement while working closely with planning teams, sales teams, development and data-related departments, and other Rakuten Group service teams.

- Career Development
Skills and Career Paths You Can Gain

As this is a new business area, you will have many opportunities to go through rapid cycles of trial and error. Through this environment, you can significantly strengthen core business skills such as problem identification, problem-solving, and the ability to break through challenges.

In the future, this role can lead to various career paths within Rakuten Group, including career advancement into a management position or opportunities to transfer to other business divisions.

- Competitive Differentiation
The Appeal of This Business × Rakuten Group Resources

A major advantage of this role is that you will not be limited to marketing for Rakuten Travel Experiences alone. You will be able to leverage the broader resources of Rakuten Group, including its membership base, purchase and booking data, advertising and media assets, and potential collaboration with other travel and leisure-related services.

You will have the opportunity to work on marketing initiatives that are difficult to achieve as a standalone service, such as customer traffic collaboration across Rakuten Group services, campaign integration, CRM initiatives based on user segmentation, and cross-use promotion. These initiatives can be executed at a scale unique to Rakuten Group.

In addition, by using DOMO and SQL to combine multiple data sources, visualize business issues, and translate insights into marketing actions, you can gain experience that goes beyond data analysis and directly contributes to business growth.

Position Details

You will be responsible for designing, building, and operating BI dashboards, primarily using DOMO, within the marketing department of Rakuten Travel Experiences. You will also handle data extraction and analysis using SQL, visualize the performance of various marketing initiatives, and provide improvement proposals based on data insights.

This role is expected to support data-driven decision-making across marketing activities by creating reporting environments, monitoring key business and marketing indicators, and translating analytical findings into actionable recommendations.

Specific Responsibilities
- Design, build, improve, and operate BI dashboards using DOMO
- Extract, process, aggregate, and analyze data using SQL
- Design datasets and data marts required for DOMO dashboard development
- Develop monitoring environments for key metrics such as number of bookings, CVR, sales, traffic, cancellations, and repeat usage rate
- Aggregate results and propose improvements for sales promotions and campaign initiatives
- Analyze user behavior using analytics tools such as Adobe Analytics
Collaborate with other Rakuten services and related departments responsible for CRM initiatives, sales promotions, paid search advertising, affiliate marketing, SEO, and other marketing activities
- Track the performance of each user acquisition channel and visualize overall marketing performance
- Create ER diagrams, organize data definitions, and visualize data structures as needed

Work Environment

- Organization Structure
Overall business division: 31 members
Marketing Group: 3 members
Composition: 1 Manager, 1 Vice Office Manager, and 1 team member
Age range: Members are mainly in their 20s to 40s
Organizational culture: A dynamic and fast-moving organization with open and flat communication
Ratio of new graduate hires to mid-career hires: Approximately one-third of the organization consists of mid-career hires.

Background of Mid-Career Hires

One example of a mid-career hire is a member who had previously gained marketing experience in another department within Rakuten Travel.

The team has an open and active communication culture, where members engage in lively discussions and work collaboratively in a friendly atmosphere to drive the business forward. Rather than focusing deeply on only one specific area, this environment is well suited for individuals who can understand marketing as a whole, leverage data to identify issues, propose improvements, and execute initiatives.

Career Path Example of a Successful Mid-Career Hire

After transferring to this department, the employee immediately took on the role of Assistant Manager and began leading a small team.

Mandatory Qualifications:

Required Experience
Professional Experience
Practical experience in data analysis, BI, and/or marketing
Experience identifying business issues through data analysis and contributing to marketing improvements or decision-making support

Skills and Experience
Experience creating and operating dashboards using DOMO
Experience designing datasets and data flows, and creating cards in DOMO
Experience extracting, processing, aggregating, and analyzing data using SQL
Experience designing, visualizing, and monitoring marketing KPIs
Strong communication skills to collaborate effectively with related departments and drive projects forward
Ability to translate analysis results into documents and dashboards, and explain insights clearly to non-data specialists
Basic PC skills, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Desired Qualifications:

- Experience in the travel and/or tourism industry
- Ownership and execution capability: A strong sense of ownership and initiative, with the ability to proactively seek solutions when issues arise, rather than waiting for instructions, and to drive execution by involving others
- Adaptability and a positive mindset toward change: Ability to embrace change and uncertainty during the growth phase of a new business, and to respond positively to unexpected challenges
- Experience designing data marts and organizing data definitions
- Experience creating ER diagrams, or conducting analysis based on an understanding of database structures
- Experience building reporting environments that integrate multiple data sources
- Experience using web analytics tools such as Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics
- Basic knowledge of paid search advertising, affiliate marketing, SEO, and other digital marketing channels
- Experience measuring the effectiveness of advertising and user acquisition channels, including ROI analysis
- Marketing experience in EC, travel, tourism, booking services, leisure, or platform businesses
- Strong business communication skills
- Experience conducting data analysis and making proposals in collaboration with sales departments or business planning teams
- Experience communicating in English via email, chat, meetings, and other business settings