About Zalando
Zalando is Europe's largest online fashion and lifestyle platform. Founded in Berlin in 2008, the company serves 51.8 million active customers across 25 markets, generating €10.6 billion in revenue in 2024. Zalando carries a market cap of approximately $8.6 billion. The platform connects customers with over 4,500 brands and more than 1 million product listings. At that scale, the question is no longer how to build an audience. The question is how to reach the right segment of it, and at what cost.
The Challenge: Reactivation Is Harder Than Acquisition
According to Moritz, Zalando’s B2B gift card manager, the fashion giant’s gift card program has multiple jobs. It rewards loyal customers, drives new customer acquisition, and most critically, reactivates customers who have drifted. Of the three, reactivation is often the most underestimated.
A lapsed customer already knows the brand. The purchase barrier is familiarity, not discovery. But reaching that customer at the right moment, when they have spend intent and a reason to return, requires presence in the right channel at the right time.
The Distribution Problem: Reach Without Fragmentation
Before finperks, expanding gift card distribution meant managing each channel individually. Every banking app, HR platform, neobank, or rewards partner (check out the partners we support on our industries page) represented a separate negotiation, a separate integration, and a separate commercial agreement. For a brand operating across 25 European markets, that fragmentation compounds fast.
The finperks model replaces that stack with a single integration. One API connection gives Zalando access to banks, insurance companies, HR platforms, and reward programs cross, without Zalando's team managing the relationships behind each one.
As Zalando's gift card team put it: "finperks enables us to have super high reach, meaning that with a simple integration, we are able to reach banks, insurance companies, HR companies, and so on. Those are exactly the customers we want."
The technical reality behind that statement: “....they holds the supplier contracts, manages the distribution partnerships, and handles the technical integrations on its side. What Zalando's team built was the participation decision, while the infrastructure was already there.
New Channels, New Customer Types
The channels finperks connects to don't just extend reach. They reach different people.
Banking apps and HR benefit platforms, the industries we currently put Zalando gift cards in skew towards employed, financially active users, people who manage money through apps, engage regularly with cashback and reward features, and make deliberate spending decisions. That profile maps closely to the Zalando customer Zalando most wants: high purchase frequency, above-average basket size, and genuine fashion engagement.
The gift card also changes the purchase psychology. A user sitting inside their banking app, seeing €15 in accumulated cashback, and choosing to spend it at Zalando is not responding to an ad. They are making an active choice with money they already consider earned. That intent converts differently than a user who clicked through from a display campaign.
Zalando's gift card team noted the opportunity: "With all the information we're sharing, we're able to create offers that customers normally would not receive." It moves beyond the generic promotion to a targeted placement with context the brand's own channels can't replicate.
Three Things A Gift Card Strategy Unlocks For You
Gift card distribution through finperks's network runs parallel to Zalando's standard acquisition channels, not in competition with them. The mechanics are distinct enough that the two don't cannibalise each other.
- Reactivation at the point of spend: Lapsed customers encounter Zalando inside platforms they use daily, at moments of active spend intent, not while scrolling past an ad.
- New customer acquisition through trusted intermediaries: A user who discovers Zalando through their bank's reward catalog is introduced through a channel they already trust. The brand association lands differently.
- Loyalty reinforcement for existing customers: Customers who already buy from Zalando see the brand present across their financial and reward ecosystem. Repeat exposure in non-advertising contexts reinforces brand preference without adding to ad spend.
Why Brands Describe This As Low-risk Expansion
Gift card distribution through a network like finperks carries a different risk profile than performance marketing. There is no upfront media spend. The cost structure ties directly to distribution activity. And the customers delivered arrive with intent already formed. They chose the brand, not the other way around.
For Zalando, which already operates the largest fashion platform in Europe, the value isn't in building awareness. It's in activating spend from customers who are already aware but not currently buying, and doing it through channels where the competition for attention is low and the moment of purchase intent is high.
This case study is based on interview content with Zalando's gift card team.
