Strategic Goals
Ambitious targets driving our personalization strategy for FY27 and beyond.
FY27 Primary Target
504K Incremental Renewals
Through personalization-driven member experiences
Renewal Lift Goal
Strategic Context
Brand Awareness
Shift from capturing demand to creating it with 60/40 brand-to-performance mix
High LTV Joins
Quality joins over promoted joins for higher long-term retention rates
Member Retention
Drive renewals and reduce churn through personalized engagement and value demonstration
GMV & In-Club Sales
Drive visit frequency and basket size through personalized experiences
The Personalization Flywheel
A continuous cycle of understanding, decisioning, activation, and learning that drives member value.
Click on any stage above to explore the personalization journey
High Value Actions (HVAs)
13 critical member behaviors that drive the most value to Sam's Club. These are the actions we optimize for.
High Value Actions (HVAs)
HVAs represent the specific member behaviors most strongly correlated with outcomes such as renewal, engagement, and spend. They serve as the foundation for personalization by defining which actions should be promoted across the member lifecycle.
Defined HVAs
Next Best Actions (NBAs)
29 personalized recommendations powered by decisioning logic to guide members toward High Value Actions.
Next Best Actions (NBAs)
The NBA engine evaluates opportunities and determines the most effective action to take for each member. This includes selecting what to show, where to deliver it, when to engage, and how to present the experience.
Defined NBAs
Execution Roadmap
A phased approach from April 2026 to January 2027, balancing immediate impact with long-term system development.
Foundation
Apr - May 2026
(0-2 Months)Establish clarity on current state, systems, and priorities
Operationalization
Jun - Jul 2026
(2-4 Months)Scale core personalization capabilities and standardize execution
Optimization
Aug - Oct 2026
(4-6 Months)Improve performance through testing, orchestration, and refinement
Predictive Personalization
Nov 2026 - Jan 2027
(6-9 Months)Evolve toward AI-driven, proactive personalization
Key Performance Indicators
Measuring personalization across behavioral change, business impact, scale, and operational efficiency.
FY27 Primary Target
Drive 504K incremental renewals through personalization initiatives
Renewal Lift
Note: These KPIs represent the measurement framework for personalization. Specific numeric targets will be established during Phase 1 (Foundation) as baseline metrics are captured and analyzed. All metrics will be tracked through incrementality testing to validate causal impact.
Capability Domains
Interconnected capability areas that work together to deliver end-to-end personalized experiences.
End-to-End Connected System
These domains must operate as a connected, end-to-end system. Data flows from member understanding through decisioning and activation, then is measured and fed back to continuously improve the system.
Learning
How It Comes Together
The personalization capability transforms member data into meaningful, measurable outcomes. It begins with unified understanding through integrated data and signals, which feed into a centralized decisioning engine that determines the most impactful action based on HVAs and NBA logic.
Platform Mindset
As personalization expands in scope, capabilities must be built with a platform mindset. This ensures they are reusable, extensible, and able to support multiple teams, use cases, and future innovation including AI-driven and agent-based experiences.
Cross-Functional Partners
Product, Tech, and Marketing teams that translate strategy into execution and measurable outcomes.
Operating Model
Architects of Why
Define vision, priorities, and success metrics
Experience Designers
Translate strategy into actionable plans
Connective Tissue
Execute and coordinate across teams
Prioritization Framework
Structured approach to evaluate and sequence personalization initiatives based on impact and feasibility.
Request Authorization & Intake Framework
To ensure focus on the highest-impact work while maintaining speed and flexibility, personalization operates under a structured prioritization framework that balances business value, feasibility, and timing. This framework is not advisory—it is the governing system through which all personalization work is evaluated and approved.
Tier 1: Rapid Intake
Day-to-Day Decisions
Lightweight filter to quickly assess whether requests warrant further consideration.
Tier 2: Strategic Planning
Roadmap & Prioritization
Detailed scoring model for larger initiatives and competing priorities.
Prioritization Guidelines
Capacity & Governance Guardrails
Any request that falls outside available capacity must either replace an existing prioritized initiative or be deferred to a future planning cycle.
Change Management & Adoption
Ensuring successful adoption through structured change management and stakeholder engagement.
Change Management & Adoption
Transitioning to a centralized, decisioning-driven personalization model represents a significant shift in how teams operate, plan, and execute. Success depends not only on building new capabilities, but also on driving adoption of new behaviors and ways of working across the organization.
Key Behavioral Shifts
Adoption Support
Leadership Expectations
Leaders at all levels play a critical role in reinforcing changes by modeling expected behaviors, making tradeoffs explicit, and ensuring teams operate within the defined system.
Senior Director
Strategy
Execution
Senior Manager
Strategy
Execution
Operating Cadence & Ways of Working
Governance structure, meeting rhythms, and intake processes that ensure operational excellence.
Operating Cadence
To translate strategy into consistent execution, personalization operates within a defined cadence that aligns prioritization, planning, execution, and measurement across teams.
Product/Tech Vertical
Governs how personalization strategy is translated into scalable capabilities
Marketing Horizontal
Governs how use cases are translated into coordinated member experiences
Proactive Engagement Model
Beyond formal cadences, teams are expected to engage proactively. Planning should engage with Creative and Channel early to ensure feasibility and speed, while Operations should identify and resolve friction points before they impact timelines. This replaces reactive, handoff-based workflows with a more integrated, high-velocity operating environment.