Publisher Spotlight: Bonusway

Can you briefly introduce yourself?

I am Wester Schaefer, born and raised in the Netherlands, but I have been living in Germany for 7 years and now in Finland. During my time in Berlin, I worked in start-ups and scale-ups in the digital media & tech industry. Since moving to Helsinki, I have been working as General Manager for the Dutch branch of Bonusway.

Can you introduce Bonusway and its core business values?

Founded in 2011, Bonusway is the leading e-commerce cashback service in Europe, operating in 17 countries with more than 5 million members. Our platform offers local and international advertisers the opportunity to generate extra sales by sharing offers & shopping incentives with an active member base, both via app and desktop.

What could you say about the biggest benefits for an advertiser to work with Bonusway? Why should they corporate with Bonusway?

Bonusway is well-positioned to trigger a campaign for an advertiser across different markets in Europe. A central organization allows us to deploy our presence in various countries quickly and efficiently. With both a mobile app and a desktop version of our service, we can also activate our members via multiple channels towards a specific campaign via different touchpoints. This makes it possible for both local and international advertisers to choose the right channel, scale and frequency for a campaign.

With which target group and which advertisers do you work best with?

Throughout the year, we see different trends in purchasing behaviour based in particular on the seasons and certain sales. However, we generally see four usage profiles: young women with an affinity for fashion, beauty and shoes; young & elderly couples and solo travellers who book their hotel, flight and car rental through the platform; Millennials who are more likely to make smaller purchases in different categories; and finally families who purchase their home, garden and kitchen equipment through our platform.

Do you have a nice piece of news that you can share with us?

Certainly! We recently acquired Ippies.nl as Bonusway. With this, we create a win-win deal. We can add communication functions to Ippies and Bonusway expands its reach.

What trends do you see in the online (and/or affiliate) marketing world in the Netherlands? How do you respond to this?

The number of purchases made via our platform, but also in general via the app, is increasing. A good mobile-first experience for members and advertisers is therefore becoming increasingly important. Our response is the launch of new apps in all our markets and a renewed organizational focus.

A large amount of (historical) data on purchasing behaviour also makes it increasingly possible to approach certain groups at a certain time with a certain message. The ability to offer individual experiences to (to some extent) individual users is an increasingly important tool for parties such as Bonusway to increase conversion for advertisers. We have already taken good steps in building various AI models for emails and app pushes, and hope to roll this out further in the coming year.

What do you like about affiliate marketing?

It is performance-oriented, so you can quickly see whether a particular channel is valuable to you as an advertiser or not. This also makes it easier to talk about success (or lack thereof) with a view to future collaborations. Balancing a win-win setup – based on the desire for long-term cooperation – between advertiser, network, agency and affiliate is also a nice task.

Is there anything else planned?

We are in the process of expanding our service both in the Netherlands and in other countries and hope to be able to share various reports on this in the course of the year.

Thank you, Wester, for the interview!