Overview

During a pivotal phase of adiClub’s growth, the membership onboarding experience was identified as a critical touchpoint for optimisation. As Senior Content Designer, the remit included full content ownership of the onboarding journey — from identifying the problem to research, strategy, UX writing, testing, and localisation in collaboration with the global translations team.

Working cross-functionally with stakeholders across CRM, Product, Brand and CRO, the objective was to redesign how millions of new members experience and understand the value of joining adiClub — from their very first interaction.

As Kristina Halvorson, founder of Brain Traffic, puts it:

“Content strategy isn’t just what we say. It’s how we say it, where, when, and why — in a way that supports users and meets business goals.”

This project required exactly that level of strategic thinking — balancing brand voice, usability, localisation and commercial impact.

Context

adiClub is a core strategic initiative at adidas. Members receive exclusive access to raffles, early product drops, tailored experiences and personalised rewards — all designed to deepen brand engagement and drive long-term value.

Every month, millions of new members are onboarded through email and on-site experiences that must:

Clearly explain how the membership works (points, levels, benefits)
Drive initial engagement across products, activities and profile completion
Build trust early by delivering on the promise of personalisation
Reflect the adidas brand in tone and clarity

adiClub members are known to spend £100 more per transaction than non-members, making onboarding a key commercial and customer experience moment.

Key challenges

Information overload
The program has legal, educational, and promotional messages that all need to land. The challenge was simplifying without losing nuance.
Complex mechanics
Concepts like “level points” vs “spendable points” often confused new members. The language needed to be both accurate and approachable.
Tone and brand identity
The existing content lacked adidas’ unique tone — it felt corporate and overly simplified. Members weren’t connecting with it emotionally.

As Sarah Winters (Content Design London) says: “If you simplify so much that users can’t see themselves in the content, you haven’t made it accessible — you’ve made it invisible.” This project reinforced that accessibility and brand voice are not mutually exclusive.

The solution

Over 12 months, the team followed a Double Diamond process, combining qualitative user research, data-driven experimentation, and collaborative iteration.

What we did:

Launched A/B/C testing in English-speaking markets to assess layout, hierarchy, and tone
Tested CTA positioning, prose vs bullet copy, and sequencing across multiple touchpoints
Extended the onboarding journey from 3 emails to 5, allowing for a slower, more intuitive ramp-up
Refined language to bring back adidas’ distinctive voice — positive, energetic, and personal
Developed reusable modules for localisation and global consistency
Built in tone guidance for market teams to maintain clarity and brand character in translated versions

Throughout, the content was intentionally designed to be light, action-oriented and scalable.

The results

The new onboarding sequence is currently under development for a global rollout. Early tests showed:

Increased click-through and conversion rates
Higher opt-ins to profile enrichment
Stronger recall of membership benefits and program rules
Positive user sentiment around tone, pacing and relevance

By giving the experience more breathing room, clarity improved and so did engagement. What seemed like a risk (extending the journey to five emails) turned out to be a win.

Validation:

We presented the Figma designs and results to the broader customer experience design team at various points during this process. Part of the adidas CE design team ethos is to share our work constantly; through visibility, we can pause, take stock, and collaborate with other product teams.

Learnings - Impossible really IS nothing!

A key insight from this project: "Impossible is Nothing" applies to content, too.

While the impulse in UX and accessibility is often to simplify down to the plainest possible version, that can come at the cost of voice and connection, one of the most surprising findings was that users responded better when we reintroduced adidas’ authentic brand voice, energetic, colloquial, positive, rather than stripping things back to overly corporate language. We weren’t just losing clarity in the old version; we were losing personality, and with it, consumer interest.

“People don’t engage with brands. They engage with feelings and ideas the brand represents.” – Jonathon Colman (HubSpot)

The updated experience used accessible design and a recognisable voice to build trust and connection, a reminder that clarity and character can, and should, coexist. Another unexpected outcome was that expanding the journey (from three to five touchpoints) didn’t reduce engagement; it improved it. With better pacing, hierarchy and clarity, members were more willing to follow through. Finally, the project reaffirmed that deletion is a form of design. Every word was tested. Every sentence had to earn its place. When complexity is non-negotiable, structure, tone and trust become the most powerful design tools at our disposal.

Content design portfolio

Project: adiClub | Welcome & Onboarding