Sam's Club

As the primary designer, I redesigned how Sam's Club communicates with its members — spanning in-app messaging, a community portal, marketing workflows, and personalization.

Role: Primary designer, end to end
With: Product, Engineering, Marketing, Content, Legal

Problem

The core problem with messaging and marketing was simple: it was inaccessible, disjointed, and unpersonalized.

The result: missed engagement, unreached audiences, and a member experience that felt disconnected.

Strategy

I approached the work as an ecosystem. That meant understanding not only what members saw, but also how internal teams managed communication. I focused on three connected workstreams:

• Message Center: Create a centralized destination for member communications.
• Marketing: Improve the workflow foundations that shaped how communications were planned and delivered.
• Personalization: Design a structure that could support more relevant and timely messaging over time.

This framework helped the teams move from isolated solutions toward a broader, more strategic experience model.

Message Center

The product

Before Message Center, Sam's Club had one channel to reach members: email. Members who didn't open emails were unreachable. Message Center changed that — introducing a native inbox and push notifications directly in the app for the first time.

I focused on making the experience accessible, flexible across message types, and consistent across platforms — so it could scale beyond launch without needing to be rebuilt.

The quest

The core question was discoverability. Message Center was a net-new feature — members had no mental model for it yet. We tested whether red notification badges on the app icon, the account tab, and the Messages tile were enough to surface it intuitively.

The goal: Enable members to find their messages quickly, without being taught how.

Unlocked 1.8M Members

This initiative helped unlock access to 1.8M members who were previously unreachable through email, projected to deliver $316M in business value through improved engagement and savings visibility.

Member's Mark Community

The product

Member's Mark Community was a zero-to-one initiative to transform Sam's Club's research panel into a mobile-first co-creation experience.

The goal: create a more direct feedback loop between members and the teams building Member's Mark products.

I designed the associate tools that turned participation into insight, helping internal teams recruit members, launch research activities, and make faster, more confident product decisions.

The process

We worked iteratively — rapid prototypes, frequent refinement, and tight feedback loops with business stakeholders to pressure-test ideas early.

Tough calls

The hardest part wasn't coming up with ideas — it was knowing which ones to fight for. Features like data visualization and native survey tooling had real user value but hit engineering and timeline walls. I learned to prioritize and make the case for what mattered most.

Road to 50k users

My work created the foundation for launch and growth — supporting a Q4 FY26 pilot launch and a goal of 30% active membership growth across a 50,000-member base.

Marketing Automation

The prototype

This prototype envisioned the end state — a fully integrated workflow where automation connects each step across tools, eliminating friction between planning and execution.

The process

I led a 2-day cross-functional workshop to help the marketing team surface inefficiencies and define opportunities for automation and smarter campaign orchestration.

The workshop moved through three phases — discovery, ideation, and prioritization — covering journey mapping, tool audits, "How Might We" exercises, and affinity mapping.

Personalization

A key part of the work was designing for relevance, not just reach. I worked closely with our Content team to shape the experience framework that supported more personalized communication over time by considering:

• What content matters most to different members
• How messages should be prioritized
• How to balance relevance with clarity

This made personalization feel like part of the product experience, not just a marketing layer.

$4–5M in incremental operating income

The outcome was a validated journey roadmap projected to drive $4–5M through campaign efficiency and personalization — with vendor partnerships locked and engineering in active build at handoff.

Designing for scale

Systems thinking

Because the experience spanned multiple platforms and needed to support evolving needs, I approached the work with systems thinking in mind.

I focused on reusable patterns, consistency across surfaces, and a structure that could scale with future message types and business needs.

Multi-tenancy

As of 2026, I officially moved to Walmart's design organization. Walmart's design team goals focused on a broader set of tenants within Walmart, which includes Sam's Club.

Conclusion

How did it add up?

Three separate workstreams. One cohesive experience. How Sam's Club talks to its members — and how members talk back. Designing them together meant the experience could eventually feel coherent, not just consistent.

That's the kind of work I want to keep doing.

💰 $316M in business value

🙋🏻 50K community members

📈 $4–5M projected operating income

fredkimdesign@gmail.com