Zalando

I wrote a long and rather waffling article about Zalando recently. It’s a company I only heard about on the back of Wired Retail, where the founder gave a talk.

Ecommerce, yes, but also the vision to build a fashion platform (and become a tech company), backed up by a lot of resource (innovation hubs, app teams, APIs to startups etc.), bringing unique consumer experiences that have so far been lacking in online shopping.

I’m not sure why Zalando was new to me – it turns over $3bn.

Anyway, as part of investigating the main website, I signed up and had a look around.

One of its services, Zalando Lounge, is a sales-based batch-order service, where you can get big discounts during a certain window, the goods come direct from manufacturer and hence you wait a few weeks for delivery.

Because it has lots of time-sensitive sales, ZL sends you a daily email with designer offers. Obviously, that’s a bit much on my wage, so I went to unsubscribe.

Here’s what I found.

Unsubscribe, please

Before I loosely describe its benefits, just look at it, in all its splendour, below.

unsubscribe zalando

1) I had been automatically signed up for the daily round-up email when I registered with the site.

The first thing this unsubscribe feature does (actually, it’s really a ‘my account’ newsletter subscriptions area, but I was directed here when hitting unsubscribe) is present me with the choice of a weekly email instead.

That’s a compelling argument – an 86% decrease in the number of emails I’m receiving.

2) I thought this was an inspired touch. I can simply opt not to receive the daily newsletter on certain days (say I’m too busy on Monday, and too lazy on Sunday, for example).

3) An even more inspired touch. For those uncertain if they want to cut the cord forever, the option to simply suspend the email for a set time (from 1-30 days).

4) Lastly, the unsubscribe option. The usual sad dropdown of reasons (sniff, sniff) is complemented by a sort of snide ‘this is what you’ll be missing’ message that has become best practice.

In my opinion, this is the best newsletter unsubscribe I’ve seen.

I’d say, in its own way, it matches the beauty of Now TV’s cancellation process (which I summed up here).

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