In this episode of The Partner Marketing Podcast, Matthias sits down with Anika Kreißl, Teamlead Display, Retargeting & Affiliate Marketing at Bonprix. With over a decade of experience in online marketing and two and a half years leading the display, retargeting, and affiliate team at Bonprix, Anika brings a rich perspective on digital transformation, customer acquisition strategy, data challenges, and the evolving role of Partner Marketing in a highly competitive and privacy-constrained environment. This episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at how Bonprix is navigating complex market dynamics, while remaining agile, innovative, and consumer-focused.
Bonprix’s digital transformation and market repositioning
Matthias: "Very warm welcome to the Partner Marketing Podcast. My guest today is Anika Kreisel. Anika works at Bonprix, an international fashion brand operating out of Hamburg. Hello, Anika. Welcome to the Partner Marketing Podcast."
Anika: "Thank you, Matthias, for the warm welcome, and thanks for having me today. So, my name is Anika. I'm working at Bonprix, and I've been leading the team for display retargeting and affiliate marketing for roughly two and a half years now, and I've experience in online marketing for about 10 years. In my role at Bonprix, I'm mainly focusing on developing and implementing strategies to look out for new customers, steer campaigns efficiently, and work with my impressive team together and focus on new campaigns and new ideas we always have."
Anika begins the conversation by providing background on Bonprix’s journey from a traditional retail player to a pure online fashion Brand. Although the Brand is based in Hamburg, it operates online stores in over 25 countries and offers not only women’s fashion - its primary focus - but also children’s, men’s, and home and garden products. Bonprix once maintained physical stores, including an innovative concept store with app-based dressing room experiences, but ultimately transitioned to an online-only model due to changing consumer behavior and readiness. Anika explains that while this move was bold, the company is still undergoing transformation, especially as it attempts to modernize its Brand image and target a younger, more fashion-forward demographic.
Anika notes that while Bonprix used to be associated with affordable and sometimes considered “cheap” fashion, the Brand has successfully elevated its image through a more modern web shop, vibrant product presentation, and an evolved assortment that reflects current trends. However, the transformation is ongoing, especially as the competitive landscape changes rapidly—with Asian fast fashion giants entering the European market and e-commerce overall facing significant challenges.
Strategic customer acquisition in a competitive landscape
Anika emphasizes that acquiring new customers remains one of Bonprix’s core strategic goals. In a saturated and evolving market, the company has built a large in-house marketing organization of approximately 70 people, covering disciplines such as paid search, social media, email, push notifications, display, affiliate, and retargeting. This in-house approach allows Bonprix to maintain full control over strategy, implementation, and budget efficiency across all performance channels.
She explains that each country requires a tailored acquisition strategy due to local differences in Brand awareness, consumer behavior, and channel effectiveness. For instance, while Germany remains Bonprix’s strongest market, countries like France and Spain present more challenges due to tougher competition and different data privacy landscapes.
Anika: "I think we're still transitioning because the market is changing a lot. We see new competitors like Asian brands coming into the European market, especially in the German market. We see that e-commerce is struggling for most web shops. And we need to define what can we do? How can we be? We always need to set innovative fashion, but we also need to be on top of people's minds for them to have a high brand awareness. And that also differs between the countries. So, Germany is our home market or strongest market as well. And the other countries have different experiences. For example, France or Spain are quite difficult because you also have very hard competitors. And so, it differs from country to country. And also, from the brand awareness we have in the countries."
Bonprix’s acquisition strategy spans both lower and mid-funnel campaigns. Although performance marketing - particularly search and retargeting - continues to drive the majority of revenue, Anika notes that the company is exploring how upper and mid-funnel campaigns, such as TikTok and influencer marketing, can contribute to sales. Bonprix uses in-house data science teams, dynamic attribution models, and marketing mix modeling to assess cross-channel impact and optimize spend. These tools help them understand how channels influence one another and where to allocate budget most effectively.
Attribution, data challenges, and privacy regulations
One of the most pressing challenges facing Bonprix, and e-commerce at large, is the ability to track and attribute user actions in an increasingly privacy-conscious world. Anika details the internal tools and infrastructure developed to consolidate data across channels, allowing the Brand to conduct user journey analysis through click- and impression-based attribution.
However, she acknowledges that impression-based attribution remains a work in progress due to the sheer volume of data and the complexity of measuring Brand exposure across video and display channels. Additionally, evolving privacy regulations, particularly in countries like France, are reducing the availability of tracking data, which makes it harder to measure and optimize campaigns. Despite having their own tools, dashboards, and data science teams, Bonprix has felt the impact of GDPR, consent banners, and upcoming cookieless environments, making attribution even more difficult and potentially limiting business performance.
New vs. returning customers and retargeting strategy
A central tension in performance marketing is the distinction between new and returning customers. Anika describes how Bonprix carefully examines whether retargeting and paid re-engagement strategies are actually necessary, or if certain users would have returned organically. In past experiments, they tested excluding recent visitors from retargeting campaigns, only to discover that the redirected budget did not yield sufficient results in other channels.
Anika: "What we did in the past was try to exclude certain customer groups. Also, say after the last visit, we don't show them, for example, retargeting ads for three days. However, we saw even if we do this, we try to spend not as much budget. So, to see if we can invest the budget, we're not spending on retargeting ads, for example, for the three days into other channels. And this was not working out, to be honest. We saw that the demand we were losing was not growing or developing in other channels, such as non-paid or post-show email. On the one hand, it's quite difficult to analyze and to see if you don't spend budget on the user, are they coming otherwise as well? But in the end, we decided to delete all of the exclusions we had in the past."
As a result, Bonprix now favors inclusion strategies, focusing instead on optimizing spend toward high-performing customer segments and AI-powered lookalike audiences. Exclusions based on visit recency were abandoned in favor of maximizing reach and maintaining continuity, particularly in a competitive environment.
Channel collaboration, team structure, and KPI framework
Anika shares that Bonprix’s approach to managing multiple performance channels involves a combination of cross-functional collaboration and centralized analytics. While each channel has a dedicated team, the company maintains strategic alignment through shared OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and project groups - particularly for overarching initiatives like tracking and data privacy. Frequent coordination between paid search, display, social, and affiliate teams ensures consistency in messaging and campaign execution.
Key performance indicators differ by channel and funnel stage. For lower-funnel performance campaigns, Bonprix primarily uses cost-to-demand ratios and new customer rates. However, metrics are adapted by market maturity; Germany, as a highly developed market, allows for stricter efficiency targets, while developing markets like the Nordics or Southern Europe require more flexible benchmarks.
Anika: "If you see a campaign or channel where the new customer rates are higher than in the others, we are also willing to invest in a much higher cost-demand ratio. This is different from channel to channel and from market to market because we always see the state of the market. For example, in Germany, we have the biggest Brand awareness. This is a country where we can steer extremely efficiently. However, for example, in the Nordic countries, we are trying a different approach. And so, the KPIs are different between the channels and between the countries as well."
The role and strengths of Partner Marketing
When discussing Partner Marketing, Anika highlights how this channel differs from others through its diverse ecosystem of Publishers and business models. She only began overseeing affiliate marketing about a year ago, but she’s come to appreciate its dynamic, fast-evolving nature. She describes Partner Marketing as an incubator environment, allowing for scalable experimentation with different traffic sources such as cashback, content, browser extensions, CSS, and influencer partnerships.
Anika: "We can test and learn new partners in a very, I would say, easy environment with our networks. And then, even if we can see there's potential to grow, we can grow the partners or publishers within the network or find other solutions. So it's quite an incubator for us."
Despite its smaller share of Bonprix’s total acquisition mix—likely under 20%—Partner Marketing is seen as highly cost-efficient, especially when compared to rising costs in channels like Google or Meta. The value lies in incremental traffic, access to niche audiences, and the ability to optimize individual partnerships based on ROAS, customer quality, and contribution to new customer acquisition.
Anika: "When you compare the costs per acquisition, we always come to a conclusion that Partner Marketing is the most efficient channel, so the most cost-effective, maybe I should just say cheap, cheapest channel, so for sales, especially because, like from own experience with other stuff, I know for myself, that's my own experience, that when you try to scale, for example, Google campaigns, it becomes very quickly very expensive, while in Partner Marketing, you have so many different partners."
The future of Partner Marketing and the role of AI
Anika expresses both optimism and curiosity about how artificial intelligence could shape Partner Marketing in the near future. She envisions AI playing a more predictive role - helping identify high-quality partners, forecast performance, and automate campaign adjustments such as commission scaling or promotion alignment.
Anika: "I would love to see during the next year and the next months a bit more AI cases to have a bit more prediction about how partners will work in the future and to see if we adapt a new partner, what prediction can we have about traffic quality and user quality. And I would love to have that for Partner Marketing as well. So, a lot more predictions and a lot more views into the future would be awesome. And also, to have a bit more automated steering. So, to see what partners, what Publishers should we also increase in commission? When should we decrease? Also, depending on the numbers we are seeing, depending on promotions we are running on the webshop."
While Bonprix already uses AI tools for internal efficiencies, such as meeting summaries and automated email drafts, Anika hopes to see this technology evolve into revenue-generating tools, especially within affiliate networks. She calls for more technical innovation from partners and networks and expresses openness to testing new AI-driven capabilities as they emerge.
Conclusion
The episode offers a detailed and inspiring look into how Bonprix is embracing innovation, tackling data complexity, and adapting to market changes in its pursuit of customer-centric digital marketing excellence. From pioneering tracking infrastructure and dynamic attribution models to strategic partner management and the thoughtful use of AI, Bonprix demonstrates how a legacy Brand can continuously evolve in a challenging and competitive space.
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About The Partner Marketing Podcast
The podcast brings together thought leaders and professionals from across the globe. In each episode, our host, Matthias, sits down with guests to discuss the evolving world of Partner Marketing and share personal stories.
For more details, please visit www.tradedoubler.com/podcast