Ulta Beauty is known for its best-in-class loyalty program, which accounts for over 90 per cent of its sales. By leveraging the data and insights gathered from this program, Ulta Beauty is able to serve its customers with highly personalised experiences.

However, the beauty retailer is not stopping there.

It has partnered with software company Adobe to build up its ability to provide ‘personalisation at scale’ to spread joy to its guests at every touchpoint, foster connections between customers and associates, and drive inspired content and product discovery at every stage of the purchase journey.

At the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual conference, Retail’s Big Show, Sucharita Kodali, VP and principal analyst at Forrest Research, moderated a discussion between Josh Friedman, VP of digital products at Ulta Beauty, and Olivia Kwon-Best, head of the digital strategy group of retail and consumer goods for Adobe, on how their partnership is revolutionising personalisation in the beauty industry.

Definition of personalisation

In response to a question from Kodali about how the retail industry’s definition of personalisation has changed over the past few years, Friedman said, “It [personalisation] hasn’t changed… It’s all about relevance, whether it is with content offerings [Ulta Beauty creates] or products getting placed in front of the customer. The thing that has changed, which is why we’re partnering with the Adobe ecosystem, is really making sure that all of the touch points get harmonised.”

Kwon-Best added, “We [Adobe] did have to put a fine-point definition on it because, as we all know, personalisation is not at all new in retail. Retailers have been at it for decades, but I think many of them still struggle to get to that cutting-edge, five out of five maturation level.”

So, how does Adobe deliver contextually relevant, tailored experiences to every customer, across every channel in a connected manner?

Part of the answer is generative artificial intelligence, better known as Gen AI.

“We feel like there’s a big opportunity there from a technology perspective, to do [personalisation] in a quicker and faster way with lower marginal costs. But the real impetus [to invest in Gen AI with Adobe] is to make sure that we’re taking care of customers in a really hyper-relevant way,” Friedman stated. 

“Loyalty is the new cookie”

Given the challenges retailers now face in obtaining third-party party data through cookies, some businesses have started ramping up their investment in their loyalty programs.

Ulta Beauty’s Friedman said these challenges partially influenced the retailer’s decision, but that at the end of the day, cookies are just one of many ways to attain information about the customer. 

“Loyalty is the new cookie and we already have loyalty with our customers. Because of our loyalty program, our log-in and identification rates are already pretty good,” Friedman commented. “Now it’s just a matter of making sure we learn as much as we can about you with your permission and we take advantage of that and give you an experience,” Friedman elaborated. 

Kwon-Best added that the work that can be accomplished with Gen AI has great potential that retailers need to continually experiment with.

“It’s really important to keep continuing advancing the use cases for this type of tech,” she emphasised.

“I think some of those more advanced market differentiating capabilities that we see retailers start tackling is having those AI decision engines better determine which consumers should get which offer or content across which channel and at what frequency, so that they engage more with Ulta Beauty or with other retailers.” 

Regarding the issue of content development, which Walmart VP of creative David Hartman brought up on the first day of NRF, Kwon-Best pointed out that it is impossible for the average creative team to manually create all types of permutations of an email or a home page to best suit the consumer and their interests.

However, by leveraging Gen AI to automate and accelerate the content creation process, retailers can truly be part of the future of personalisation, Kwon-Best concluded.

Inside Retail’s coverage of the 2025 Big Show is brought to you by Adobe.