Nico Winkelhaus, Head of Digital Marketing at PAYBACK, will be speaking at Business of Apps Berlin (formerly App Promotion Summit Berlin). He met with us for a quick, informal chat to give us an overview what he and his team are cooking for the event.
Can you start by walking us through your career path? How did you get to where you are today?
I started as a 16- or 15-year-old establishing an online video games magazine at a time when the internet was something for freaks and geeks. The goal was simply to get those kinds of games for free in order to review them. That is how I first tapped into the digital and internet area, which was around 1995.
After that, following about ten years of working on internet magazines focused on games, I moved into the media industry and joined publishing houses, including Condé Nast. These were TV and print media companies, and I was always working in the digital department. So, I had a strong traditional company on one side, while being part of the digital division on the other. That has consistently been my career path, being the “digital guy” within a more traditional company.
For the past ten years, I have been at PAYBACK as the Head of Digital Marketing. PAYBACK is Germany’s largest multi-partner loyalty programme and one of the largest in Europe as well. My main goal is to drive more digital reach for PAYBACK while also looking for ways to monetise that reach.
You’ve been working in publishing and digital marketing for thirty years now and also have founder experience, having spent the last decade at PAYBACK. In your opinion, how has the space changed in the last few years?
On a broader level, everything today is really large. Everyone is using the internet, and everyone has a smartphone, which wasn’t the case twenty years ago. But what is also nice about the industry is that it is always changing. When you thought Netscape was large and communities couldn’t be monetized, Facebook launched. When you thought Google had a real monopoly and wondered how you could possibly disrupt it, AI emerged, and now Google is changing. That constant change is part of the beauty of the industry.
The industry keeps changing — the fundamentals don’t
Source: Business of Apps via YouTube
But one thing has stayed the same, whether twenty years ago, ten years ago, or five years ago. As a digital marketer, you always have to look beneath the platforms and have a deep understanding of how KPIs are driven, what the drivers behind the results are, and what the real mechanics of a platform or a business model look like. That hasn’t changed over the decades. It is always the same approach — you have to understand the details and the drivers behind them. That is the beauty of it.
Drawing on your years of experience in the app industry, what lessons have stayed with you that still apply today?
Looking into the details is still a lesson that applies today, I would say. If you only look superficially at platform KPIs and don’t look beneath them, if you accept too much of, say, a platform’s reporting and don’t have your own data, your own view on it, your own understanding of the dependencies, then you miss what is really going on. That applies today, whether it is a platform like TikTok or Meta.
So, not trusting superficial reporting and really trying to understand the details — not managing every detail, but understanding them — is still a relevant driver of success, I think.
What advice do you have for anyone aspiring to grow into a role like yours?
Never stop learning. You have to become an expert in all the new topics that will arise. For example, when I moved into my role at PAYBACK, everything I knew from the media industry I could throw away because the eCommerce, CRM, and loyalty environment is completely different. It has different mechanics. You have to dig into the details and learn and understand them. You don’t have to manage all the details, but you do need to grasp them.
I always say you have to be a kind of T-shaped professional — you dig into the details, you understand them, you are essentially an expert on a few key topics, but you can still see the broader picture. That, I think, is the foundation of success in today’s world, whether we are talking about apps or the broader economy.
You will be speaking at Business of Apps Berlin (formerly App Promotion Summit Berlin). Can you give us a run-through of what you will be talking about?
I will talk about the PAYBACK app. We are now 25 years old, and we like to say we are now the best PAYBACK we have ever been. We are certainly bigger than ever before.
Twenty-five years ago, we were a plastic loyalty card supported print and direct mailings. The rule back then was that space in the wallet is limited; no one wanted to carry five, six, or seven plastic loyalty cards. And the same is true now in the app world. No one is using fifteen or twenty shopping or loyalty apps on their device.
That is where our success comes from. Through the multi-partner approach, we have the relevancy to be one of the few apps people actually keep. In the past, we were the third card in the wallet; now, we are a top shopping app on a user’s phone.
Tell us more about multi-partner loyalty programmes? What are they? In your opinion, why are they particularly important today?
Loyalty now is experiencing a real revival, because an app-based loyalty programme is a bit easier than the plastic and print-based loyalty programmes of the past. Since the paid channels are not as efficient anymore compared to ten years ago, many advertisers are focusing more on CRM and retention, and not so much on user acquisition. And that is where loyalty comes into play.
You can either run a multi-partner approach like ours or a single-partner approach. The beauty of the multi-partner approach is that you aggregate different shops and have one programme for all of them, which means the chance of having real, high relevancy for the user is quite strong.
Why loyalty is having a comeback in 2025
Source: Business of Apps via YouTube
The success of our programme shows that — we are the top multi-partner loyalty programme in Germany. On the other hand, there isn’t enough space for twenty or thirty mass-market loyalty programmes, because at the end of the day, a loyalty programme is a low-involvement product. It has to be easy to use, and it has to be relevant. And through the multi-partner approach, we really fuel that relevancy.
In your opinion, what is the role of loyalty programmes for building long-term retention and engagement with app users?
In past years, most advertisers focused on user acquisition and user growth, but not enough attention was given to retention and the CRM aspect. And since the paid channels are now less efficient than they were five or ten years ago, it has become important to focus more on existing customers, on increasing their value, on reducing churn, and on addressing all the topics that come with that.
So that is why using loyalty programmes as part of your CRM strategy makes the CFO more happy than trying to increase your paid investment, which may be less efficient in terms of marginal return than the CRM investment.
What types of apps are best positioned to make the most of loyalty programmes?
All types of apps can benefit from loyalty programmes. Loyalty can start early in the user’s life cycle, and it is certainly not only for eCommerce apps. It is a core topic for gaming apps, and it can also be a core topic for language apps or various types of freemium apps. It is a strong strategy as part of your overall CRM approach.
But it takes time, it is complex, and it is not easy. It is not a short-term investment, for sure — you always need to have a long-term investment expectation.
What factors do you consider the most important for building successful loyalty programmes?
It has to be relevant. There are so many loyalty programmes that are not used because they are not relevant.
In most cases, a loyalty programme is a low-involvement product. Users don’t want to invest much time into a specific loyalty program; they want to be rewarded for their actions, but they don’t want it to be time-consuming. So, it has to be fairly simple as well.
A complex loyalty program might be relevant for a very niche target group, but not if you want to scale and build a large-scale loyalty program. So, be relevant in terms of the offers and be very simple in terms of the mechanics and the overall program.
Finally, look at partnerships. You don’t always need to build everything on your own. There are many suppliers and partners who can help you build these kinds of loyalty schemes.
Privacy is the topic du jour in the app industry these days. If an app is looking to implement loyalty programmes, how should teams be thinking about and approaching privacy?
It is a very, very important topic from my point of view. At PAYBACK, privacy is part of our DNA because we manage a lot of data, and trustworthiness is essential. Loyalty only works if the user truly trusts the loyalty programme.
From a monetisation perspective, as an app publisher you might think, “Great, I have this loyalty programme. If I use the user data and monetise it aggressively, I can make a few extra euros.” But that is not a long-term strategy. Loyalty and trustworthiness have to be connected.
Data isn’t a revenue shortcut — it’s a trust contract
Source: Business of Apps via YouTube
My recommendation is: don’t make mistakes when it comes to privacy. Be very clear with the user about what you do with their data. Have very clear consent processes. And don’t try to aggressively monetise the data just to generate short-term revenue. Instead, use the data to drive relevancy — relevant offers, relevant next best actions, etc. This is a much more sustainable, future-oriented strategy.
Look at the data through the lens of relevance, not through money signs in your eyes.
If you don’t want to miss Nico’s session on loyalty, make sure to get your Business of Apps Berlin ticket today.
Nico’s answers have been slightly edited for clarity.
