PARTNERSHIPs MANAGER

Groupon is a marketplace where customers discover new experiences and services everyday and local businesses thrive. To date we have worked with over a million merchant partners worldwide, connecting over 16 million customers with deals across various categories. In a world often dominated by e-commerce giants, we stand out as one of the few platforms uniquely committed to helping local businesses succeed on a performance basis.

Groupon is on a radical journey to transform our business with relentless pursuit of results. Even with thousands of employees spread across multiple continents, we still maintain a culture that inspires innovation, rewards risk-taking and celebrates success. The impact here can be immediate due to our scale and the speed of our transformation. We're a "best of both worlds" kind of company. We're big enough to have the resources and scale, but small enough that a single person has a surprising amount of autonomy and can make a meaningful impact.

About the role :

Groupon is seeking a Strategic Partnerships Manager who will own the end-to-end partnerships engine for the Health, Beauty & Wellness vertical across three strategic pillars: bookability integrations, franchise Master Service Agreements (MSAs), and beauty brand partnerships.

This role is responsible for building and scaling partnerships that unlock merchant supply at scale, attract younger customers, and modernise connectivity. You will enter negotiations with booking platforms, acquire LOIs and MSAs with top North American franchises in the maintenance categories (hair, nails, skin, gyms), and strike partnerships with up-and-coming beauty brands to drive customer acquisition through brand trust and deal value.

This is a hands-on role, hunter, business development role requiring flexibility between strategic partnership development and tactical deal execution, with deep commercial acumen and hard work ethics. You are expected to be on the phone opening pipeline constantly.

 

North Star :

Build and scale a strategic partnerships engine across bookability, franchise, and brand pillars — targeting $3.25M in full-year 2026 revenue — by securing platform integrations, franchise MSAs, and brand deals that expand merchant supply, improve connectivity, and attract younger customers to Groupon’s HBW vertical.

 

What You’ll Do :

In collaboration, and under the supervision of the Vertical GM:

1. Bookability Partner Development (Connectivity)

What you own:

•   Enter and manage partnership negotiations with booking platforms.

•   Revitalise and refresh go-to-market strategies for existing partnerships.

•   Define integration requirements and coordinate with Product and Engineering to scope bookability features and revenue models.

How you collaborate:

•   Partner with Product and Engineering on integration feasibility, timelines, and technical requirements.

•   Consult with Commercial Strategy and Analytics to quantify revenue impact of each platform partnership.

•   Inform Sales and Market Managers on updated GTM strategies for reactivated partnerships.

2. Master Service Franchise Acquisition

What you own:

•   Build and manage the franchise acquisition pipeline: identify, qualify, and close LOIs/MSAs with top North American franchise networks in hair, nails, skin, and gym categories.

•   Target: 5 LOIs/MSAs (50 locations) by H1 2026; 7 LOIs/MSAs (70 locations) by year-end, generating $2.25M.

•   Develop standard MSA terms and negotiate enterprise-level agreements that unlock 10+ merchant locations per deal.

How you collaborate:

•   Work with Legal on MSA terms, compliance, and franchise-specific regulatory requirements.

•   Coordinate with Sales and Market Managers on location onboarding and activation post-signing.

•   Align with Finance on revenue modelling ($5K/location/month) and pipeline forecasting.

3. Brand Partnerships (“Meet Your Brands”)

What you own:

•   Identify, negotiate, and close partnerships with emerging and established beauty brands targeting younger demographics.

•   Target: 1 brand live by H1 2026; 2 brands live by year-end, generating $1.0M (5,000 units/brand/month at $20 avg M1+VFM).

•   Focus on men’s grooming brands (e.g., Papatui, Lumin, Stryx, Tone) and women’s beauty brands (e.g., Bubble, Rhode, Rare Beauty, Kosas, Summer Fridays).

•   Structure brand-subsidised deals (not Groupon-funded) that deliver value to both customers and brand partners.

How you collaborate:

•   Coordinate with Legal on brand partnership compliance, UGC rights, and promotional terms.

•   Work with Marketing and Merchandising on campaign timing, inventory availability, and brand storytelling.

4. Pipeline Management & Operational Reporting

What you own:

•   Maintain and report on pipeline health weekly: accounts in funnel, revenue size, and conversion rates across franchise and brand tracks.

•   Deliver a minimum of 10 meetings/demos/discoveries per week across all pillars.

•   Track pillar-level status and escalate early when gates or kill-zone triggers are at risk.

•   Provide monthly and quarterly revenue forecasts aligned to the ramp model (revenue begins May 2026).

 What You Bring : 

Required Experience

•   5+ years in hunting.

•   Experience, or interest at least in beauty, wellness, fitness, or similar service verticals strongly preferred.

•   Proven track record of closing deals.

•   Ability (skill and will) to flex between strategic partnership development and hands-on deal execution.

Technical & Analytical Skills

•   Advanced Excel proficiency (financial modelling, pipeline analysis, revenue forecasting).

•   Experience with Salesforce or similar CRM for pipeline tracking preferred.

•   Comfortable with deal structuring, pricing strategy, and unit economics analysis.

•   Comfort leveraging AI tools (e.g., generative AI, data analysis assistants) to accelerate research, pattern detection, and decision-making.

•   Ability to translate AI insights into concrete commercial or operational actions.

 

Who You Are : 

•   Dealmaker: You thrive in negotiations, build trust quickly, and close complex multi-stakeholder agreements.

•   Commercially minded: You understand unit economics, revenue models, and how partnerships translate to measurable business impact.

•   Strong cross-functional player: You align Product, Engineering, Legal, Sales, and Marketing toward shared execution goals.

•   Pipeline disciplined: You maintain rigorous pipeline hygiene, forecast accurately, and escalate early when targets are at risk. This is the key thing that will make you win or lose.

•   Hands-on executor: You don’t just strategise — you negotiate, close, onboard, and monitor.

 

How We Operate

At Groupon, we’re building a culture of extreme ownership, speed, impact, simplicity, and discipline. These aren’t aspirational values – they’re how we expect everyone to show up every day:

Extreme Ownership – One owner per outcome, no passengers, no excuses. We avoid accountability theater; we don’t blame teams or create shared ownership that diffuses responsibility. When something goes wrong, we look in the mirror first. We escalate early, make trade-offs explicit, and ensure everyone knows who owns what.

Speed Over Comfort – We ship fast and learn faster. Perfect is too slow. We make fast, reversible decisions, normalize iteration, encourage early demos and prototypes, and admit mistakes openly. Bureaucracy and endless debate are the enemy. We clear bottlenecks and accelerate decisions across functions.

Impact Obsessed – We focus only on what moves the metrics that matter. We set metric-first goals, direct effort to high-value work, avoid feel-good activity, and use data and customer/merchant stories to guide decisions. We don’t confuse effort with impact or tolerate low-ROI work that erodes trust. We drive team ROI and raise the quality bar by prioritizing ruthlessly.

Simplify to Scale – Complexity kills; simplicity scales. We build lean, scalable processes, remove noise, champion clarity and efficient ways of working. We drive cross-org simplification, push automation and tooling, question every layer, and ensure systems work for diverse voices – especially those closest to customers and merchants.

Disciplined – We do more with less; constraints breed creativity. We make ROI-based decisions, enforce resource discipline, set clear priorities, make durable decisions, and uphold integrity in data and commitments. We use constraints to drive innovation, build efficient operating rhythms, lift team productivity, and protect trust in trade-offs. We prioritize long-term value and create organizational leverage that scales efficiently.

In This Role, These Principles Mean:

•   You own partnership outcomes end-to-end — from pipeline building to signed agreements to revenue delivery.

•   You ship deals quickly and iterate on terms based on market feedback and performance data.

•   You focus only on partnerships that drive measurable revenue — no vanity deals or low-ROI engagements.

•   You simplify partnership frameworks and remove friction between Sales, Product, Legal, and Marketing.

•   You use data and AI to make pipeline performance predictable — not reactive.

How We Measure Your Success : 

•   Revenue delivery against pillar targets: $2.25M (Franchise MSAs) + $1.0M (Brand Partnerships) = $3.25M full-year 2026.

•   Number of LOIs/MSAs signed and locations activated (5 by H1, 7 by EOY).

•   Number of brand partnerships live and generating revenue (1 by H1, 2 by EOY).

•   Bookability integration scoping delivered by Jun 30 with clear revenue model recommendation.

•   Pipeline health: weekly pipeline size, conversion rates, and minimum 10 meetings/demos/discoveries per week.

•   Cross-functional alignment between partnership execution, merchandising, and campaign performance.

 

Location:   Downtown Chicago (Hybrid)

Salary Range: $61k—$88k + bonus

Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, EAP, 401(k) Match, ESPP, Life and Disability Insurance, FSAs, and more 

 

Groupon is an AI-First Company
We’re committed to building smarter, faster, and more innovative ways of working—and AI plays a key role in how we get there. We encourage candidates to leverage AI tools during the hiring process where it adds value, and we’re always keen to hear how technology improves the way you work. If you’re passionate about AI or curious to explore how it can elevate your role—you’ll be right at home here.

Groupon’s purpose is to build strong communities through thriving small businesses. To learn more about the world’s largest local e-commerce marketplace, click here. You can also find out more about us in the latest Groupon news as well as learning about our DEI approach. If all of this sounds like something that’s a great fit for you, then click apply and join us on a mission to become the ultimate destination for local experiences and services.

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