Partner Consultant - Retail Gift Cards (all genders)

at  Zalando

WE’D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• Extensive Experience: You have 3+ years of experience in sales, buying, retail, E-commerce, FMCG, or a similar field, with a strong focus on Strategy or Business Development.
• Local Market Expertise: You bring expertise in understanding the local consumers, competitive landscape across Europe, and especially the market dynamics in France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
• Strategic & Analytical Skills: You have a proven ability to develop strategic initiatives and present them to senior management. Your analytical skills allow you to solve complex problems with innovative and high-quality solutions. You are comfortable analysing data sets and reports yourself, and you can build strategic recommendations based on your findings.
• Innovative Mindset: You think outside the box, constantly seeking new approaches to solving challenges. You have experience developing frameworks for hypothesis testing and executing them to drive business improvements.
• Execution Excellence: You can take initiative, manage deadlines, and carry multiple projects to completion, ensuring that loyalty strategies are effectively implemented and continuously improved.
• Cultural Fit: You are an authentic, mission-driven individual who excels in managing senior stakeholders and navigating complex environments.
• Enthusiastic Team Player: You enjoy participating in team events from birthday celebrations to team building events. Adding your own voice to foster team spirit.
• Foster an Inclusive Culture: Promote an inclusive and diverse team environment, ensuring that all voices are heard and valued.
• Language Skills: You ideally speak fluent French and have excellent English language skills, both written and spoken. Other languages are a plus.
  If you are passionate about driving customer loyalty and think you have what it takes to succeed in this role, we encourage you to

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

Zalando Gift Cards are the perfect gift for friends, family or for any corporate incentive like loyalty programs and employee rewards. We are a cross-functional unit, integrated in Zalando’s Digital Experience department, which executes Zalando gift card marketing and sales strategy across Europe. Our goal is to provide our end consumers with a perfect gifting experience and to build up long-lasting cooperations with our partners and customers across Europe.
The Gift cards team is currently structured into 3 channels - B2B, B2C, and Retail. As a Partner Consultant for Retail, you will support revenue growth by managing a portfolio of partners and/or markets. You’ll contribute to the development and execution of short to long-term strategies, helping identify opportunities for better partner management, market and channel growth and identify unrealised opportunities. You will join a motivated team focused on the physical gift cards sold at retail across European markets.
As a Gift Card Retail Partner Consultant, your primary focus will be on managing and growing key accounts in BENELUX, France, & other select markets for Zalando’s Retail Gift Card team. You will play a key role in nurturing and expanding relationships with our partners, ensuring their success and driving growth within your portfolios while also looking to expand your partner portfolio. This includes a strong emphasis on deepening collaboration with existing partners, unlocking new capabilities, growing new channels and defining long-term targets. By working closely with retailers, analytics, integrators, and the larger gift card team you will develop and execute tailored strategies to maximise the potential of these partnerships, aligning them with Zalando’s overall strategic objectives. In addition to managing these important relationships, you will also seek out new opportunities and maintain an active presence in your designated markets.
In addition to your commercial and operational responsibilities, you will lead small to medium-sized projects aimed at deepening our understanding of gift card mechanisms while positioning the team for long-term success. You are encouraged to think outside the box, developing and executing frameworks for hypothesis testing to drive innovation and improve business outcomes. Your strategic insights and proactive approach will significantly contribute to the overall success of Zalando’s Gift Card business

WHAT WE’D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING)

• Strategic Development: Contribute to the development of mid-to-long-term growth strategies for your markets and the category as a whole. Translate these strategies into actionable initiatives and projects for your markets.
• Identify Growth Opportunities: You actively look for ways to grow the category beyond our current portfolio from identifying new retail partners and integrators to pushing for growth in upcoming markets and channels.
• Partner Management: Own and grow existing partner relationships. Develop and execute sales strategies through third parties and directly with retailers. You will also drive new partner listings, new channels and markets while looking for growth opportunities with existing markets.
• Collaboration: Work closely with internal and external stakeholders across departments to ensure projects and partnerships are aligned with the broader company strategy. You’ll be involved in regular communication with partners, ensuring they are supported in their growth efforts including supplying needed marketing materials. While also navigating internally to look for opportunities to collaborate and use internal resources effectively.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: You should be highly proficient in leveraging data to assess partner performance and market opportunities. The ability to use CRM systems and analytics tools to gather insights, measure KPIs, and inform strategic decision-making is crucial. Develop Insights: Gather and analyse data to assess partner performance, using tools like Spreadsheet (or equivalent) and CRM systems to create reports that inform decision-making. You will drive sales in your markets by identifying trends and opportunities for growth while looking for new opportunities.
• Process Improvement: Contribute to identifying inefficiencies in current processes and suggest improvements. You’ll play a key role in helping the team build more structured workflows in a fast-moving and at times unstructured environment.
• Stakeholder Management: You enjoy working with stakeholders both internally and externally closely with senior management to present findings, propose strategies, and lead the implementation of loyalty initiatives end-to-end.