Commercial Lead, Referrals

Upside•Washington, DC

3d•$170,000 - $200,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Upside aims to revolutionize brick-and-mortar commerce by applying the analytical rigor of online retail to enhance user value and attract profitable customers for businesses. The company's technology enables users to earn significantly more cashback than competitors and helps businesses acquire new, profitable customers, processing billions of dollars in commerce annually and benefiting retailers, consumers, and sustainability initiatives. The referral program is a critical growth engine for Upside, with referred users exhibiting higher conversion rates, greater lifetime value, and contributing a substantial portion of overall revenue. This role is responsible for maximizing the potential of this high-performing channel.

Requirements

7+ years in growth, commercial, or lifecycle marketing roles with a proven track record of owning acquisition or retention KPIs end-to-end.
Deep experience running behavior-triggered lifecycle programs (email, push, IAM) in a consumer product environment (e.g., Braze, Iterable).
Strong analytical ability, including proficiency in BI tools like Looker, conversion funnel analysis, and experience designing and interpreting A/B experiments.
Experience collaborating closely with product managers, including writing commercial requirements, participating in sprint reviews, and influencing roadmap decisions without direct engineering resource ownership.
Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with product, engineering, creative, finance, and legal teams to deliver programs on time.
Clear, direct communication skills, including the ability to write concise executive summaries and present tradeoffs to senior leadership.
Familiarity with PLG principles or viral loop design is a plus, especially if applied in consumer products to increase user-driven acquisition.

Nice To Haves

Direct ownership of a referral or word-of-mouth growth program in a consumer app, with a strong understanding of referral mechanics, fraud considerations, and sustainable performance incentive design tradeoffs.
Experience in consumer fintech, cashback, loyalty, or similarly economics-driven consumer businesses is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end performance of the referrals channel, including strategy, incentive design, lifecycle activation, conversion optimization, and measurement.
Collaborate with the Referrals Product Lead to define the product roadmap and act as the commercial and go-to-market counterpart.
Set targets for the referrals channel, track weekly performance, and implement interventions when off-pace.
Drive referred-user conversion through the entire funnel, from referral signup to first transaction and M1-M3 retention.
Build and operate a cohesive, behavior-triggered referral engine, transitioning from one-off campaigns to an always-on lifecycle system.
Define and execute incentive strategy, testing and optimizing referral bonus structures by segment to balance conversion rates and cost-per-acquired-user.
Partner with the Referrals PM to shape the product roadmap by defining commercial requirements and aligning on experiment prioritization, feature launches, and measurement.
Develop and iterate on strategies to activate the 'never-referrer' segment, encouraging users to make their first referral and become repeat advocates.
Define success metrics, manage the performance dashboard, and report progress to consumer growth leadership and company executives.