Senior Manager, AI Partnership Marketing

Direct Platform * Strategic Account Marketing

Senior Manager, AI Partnership Marketing

Chicago, IL (Hybrid)Full-time Reports to: Team Lead, Strategic Account Marketing Dotted line: Global Head of AI Platform Strategy & Partnerships

About the role

Morningstar's Direct Platform is building a dedicated AI Partnership Marketing function to protect, grow, and transform the business in the LLM and AI ecosystem. This is a foundational role - you will be the first marketer singularly focused on the partner ecosystem, responsible for designing the program from the ground up and scaling it through disciplined execution, AI-powered workflows, and deep cross-functional alignment.

You will own the strategy and activation of a tiered partner marketing program - building co-marketing playbooks, enabling internal sales teams, and driving toward $1M in closed-won partner-sourced revenue in year one. You'll operate at the intersection of product, sales, brand, and legal, serving as the primary marketing point of contact for all enrolled partners.

Year 1 targets

• $1M Closed-won partner-sourced revenue

• 5 Enrolled partners at program launch

What you'll own

• Tier program design

• Build and manage Platinum / Gold / Silver framework with upgrade criteria, QBR cadence, and tier-to-treatment logic.

• Co-marketing execution

• Own joint demand gen, webinars, paid campaigns, social, PR, and events for each tier. Build a design system for content at scale.

• Sales enablement

• Equip sellers with messaging, talk tracks, demo scripts, and joint sales plays. Track asset adoption and rep confidence scores.

• In-platform brand

• Partner with brand to define how Morningstar appears inside off-platform partner experiences, with enforceable guidelines.

• Attribution & reporting

• Build partner pipeline tracking - sourced and influenced - and present results to leadership and partners as proof of value.

• Client education

• Develop AI literacy content targeted by persona and workflow - helping advisors and clients understand AI's role in their day-to-day.

Responsibilities

• Design and launch the tiered partner marketing program (Platinum / Gold / Silver), including intake criteria, upgrade paths, and treatment-by-tier marketing plans covering demand gen, media, product marketing, events, and brand.

• Serve as the primary marketing point of contact for all enrolled partners; lead kickoff meetings to align on brand rights, creative review SLAs, joint value propositions, and rules of engagement.

• Develop co-branded campaign assets and a reusable design system with the creative team to enable fast-track content production across partners.

• Build and maintain in-platform brand guidelines defining how Morningstar appears inside partner ecosystems and off-platform experiences.

• Develop and execute GTM enablement plans for the sales team - including talk tracks, FAQs, one-pagers, and joint sales plays - and track adoption via Gong and asset engagement metrics.

• Own partner-sourced pipeline tracking and influence attribution; prepare quarterly business review (QBR) materials to demonstrate ROI to both internal leadership and partner stakeholders.

• Create targeted client education content (persona- and workflow-specific) that brings AI capabilities down to advisors' level of familiarity and comfort - starting with tactical Copilot use cases and building toward Agents and Skills adoption.

• Align with sales leadership and the Global Head of AI Platform Strategy on partner prioritization, tier assignments, and program enrollment decisions.

• Establish shared workspaces, communication cadences, and escalation paths with each partner to ensure smooth execution and accountability.

• Monitor and manage the demand-gen activation budget, tracking spend against pipeline and revenue outcomes.

• Identify operational risks - over-expansion, contractual ambiguity, brand control gaps - and proactively build processes to mitigate them.

What you bring

• 6+ years in B2B marketing with at least 2 years in partnership, channel, or alliance marketing at a SaaS or data/technology company.

• Demonstrated experience building or managing a tiered partner program - including co-marketing execution, enablement, and performance reporting.

• Strong understanding of the LLM and AI platform ecosystem; familiarity with partner marketplace dynamics and co-sell motions.

• Fluency in demand-gen channels - paid search, display, social, email, webinars, and events - with the ability to build campaigns across all of them.

• Experience with marketing attribution modeling and CRM hygiene (Salesforce), including pipeline tagging for partner-sourced and partner-influenced deals.

• Excellent cross-functional instincts: comfortable working across sales, legal, brand, product marketing, and executive stakeholders simultaneously.

• Strong project management and written communication skills; able to run multiple partner workstreams without losing fidelity on any of them.

• Experience developing client-facing education content for non-technical audiences - translating complex technology into workflow-level clarity.

• Comfort operating in ambiguity at the early stages of a program build, with the discipline to create repeatable processes from scratch.

Nice to have

• Prior experience at a fintech, financial data, or investment management company - or selling into RIAs, broker-dealers, or asset managers.

• Familiarity with co-sell programs at dominant AI platforms (e.g., Microsoft, Salesforce, Google, or similar ecosystem partners).

• Experience working with Gong for sales enablement analytics and asset adoption tracking.

• Background in brand licensing or in-platform brand governance across third-party integrations.

How success is measured

In year one, you will be evaluated on partner-sourced pipeline growth, closed-won revenue contribution toward the $1M Data and Research demand-gen goal, GTM readiness of the sales team (asset adoption, rep confidence), and the operational quality of the partner program - including time-to-readiness for new partners, QBR delivery, and tier management rigor. This role does not own marketing tactic commitments in partner contracts; you own the internal strategy and execution that drives those outcomes.