Ulta Beauty’s Kelly Mahoney on Loyalty, AI & Personalized Beauty Retail

Up today on the Speed of Culture Podcast, we're thrilled to welcome Kelly Mahoney, the Chief Marketing Officer at Ulta Beauty. Kelly's a proven marketing and strategy leader with more than 20 years of experience driving growth through data-led, consumer-centric innovation. We are here live in Las Vegas at CES. I'm so thrilled to see you. Thanks for joining.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. So it's interesting, I've been coming to CES for 25 years, and when I first started coming, it was called the Consumer Electronics Association. Now it's Consumer Technology Association, and back then it was all made makers of actual consumer electronics. And here you are as a CMO of a beauty brand.

Yes.

At CES. Why are you here and what do you hope to get out of your time here?

Well, it is, it is something I definitely thought about as well.

Yeah.

But, you know, behind all good retailers and all good brands, I think it's powered by data and technology. And that's really what drives a lot of our growth at Ulta Beauty. So I'm here to talk about data. I'm here to talk about how we leverage our data to personalize the experiences we have with our guests. And I think there's a lot I can learn too.

Absolutely. So let's talk about the Ulta business. Where does it stand today? What are its growth drivers and what are some of your key focuses headed here into 2026?

Well, Ulta Beauty is a phenomenal business, you know, a retailer in the United States, and we have over 1,500 store locations, thriving digital—

Just US-based?

We are not. So we just expanded globally last year.

Okay.

So we're now in Mexico, we're in the Middle East, and we just acquired Space NK, which is in the UK. Wow. So that's a big growth driver in terms of what's going to fuel the next set of growth for us. That is definitely on our radar as well as wellness. So wellness is a, is an assortment expansion. It's a strategy in and of itself. But we really perceive that beauty and wellness are inextricably linked now. Yeah, more than ever. And it just makes sense that beauty is wellness. Wellness is beauty. Let's really dive into this space. We can attract a new customer base. And I think we have a lot of credibility in the marketplace to do this and do this well.

Yeah. In terms of brand positioning, we've seen more broadly in the fashion industry, kind of this barbell economy unfold where you have fast fashion and value on one side and you have luxury on the other side. When you look at your category and work and your brand, where do you see you fit in? And it's funny because I worked on the launch of Victoria's Secret Pink, and I remember that was like one of the first brands that took more of an upscale luxury brand and had almost like a youthful counterpart. Right. So, and that was sort of like, I think, an early marker to where we are today. Just curious where the Ulta brand fits there.

I think that's part of what makes us pretty amazing and special is this low to luxe assortment that we can offer. Value is what we're known for, but not— we're not cheap. You know, we are value in the sense that we can offer everything that a consumer might need from the sort of everyday essentials to the what's new, trending, and what's also on the luxury spectrum too. And we have it all under one roof and we have it across our stores. We have it online. And we're highly convenient. And our loyalty program, let's not forget, like our loyalty program provides exceptional value to every member.

That's it. Now, during COVID there was so much talk about the death of the retailer and that no one's ever going to go into a retailer again. Obviously, it's proven not to be true. Now we've entered a world where obviously it's not just one-sided. It's omnichannel is the name of the game, right? And you have to be having a multitude of touchpoints for the consumer that fits their lifestyle. What is Ulta's overall strategy in terms of its channel mix? And how do you see that evolving over time with your consumer?

Yeah, I mean, we used to talk about channels very distinctly. Yeah, we have an omnichannel customer that will shop us both. And what we've learned in our category in particular, it's not linear. It is more now more than ever. It is not a linear journey for the customer. So we're trying to talk about the customer's journey and how the channels fit in to the customer's journey, because then that sort of changes and shifts the way we think about making sure we truly do deliver a seamless experience. Yeah, a lot of times we'll see that the experience with beauty starts in social. And then we have to make sure that the social experience they're having can translate well online when they want to go and actually consider and browse to then maybe when they come in store because they really want to try it before they buy it. So that's one journey and the channels facilitate that one journey. So it's really trying to smooth that experience out and make sure whatever experience they're having, we can pick up right where they left off, whether that's in social, online, or in our store.

Yeah. And of course, as a retailer, you have the benefit, especially with some of your loyalty programs, to have first-party data. And for so long, you know, the, the jargon was data is a new oil. And while data has always been valuable, AI has been the ultimate unlock of data. And now—

did you know where I started my career?

No, tell me.

Oil. The data?

No way. That's a whole nother conversation, Jack.

Okay, I'm sorry.

You gotta watch Landman, by the way.

I love that. I can relate to that so well.

I'm sure, because it is so true. It's true.

Okay, okay. So data is the new oil because you have the background in oil.

Is actually— you probably know way more valuable than data. But, you know, it is the ultimate unlock. And I'm just curious how you're looking at leveraging data to drive personalization, to drive deeper, more meaningful relationships with your customer in the age of AI.

Yes. Thanks for the question. It's my favorite one.

Okay, good.

Well, I came on to— I came on to Ulta Beauty to run our loyalty program 10 years ago. And Ulta Beauty Rewards program now has 46 million members in our program. But what's really staggering is we have 95% of All of our sales are coming from members. Wow.

That's a big number.

That's a stat.

I hate when I go to a retailer, they're like, "Do you want to sign up?" I'm always like, "No, I just want to buy and leave." Right. Like, obviously there must be value if people are signing up.

The value has changed. I mean, that's what we really have done and done really, really well. So people want to sign up and the quality of the conversations our associates have with our guests, because most of our sign-up happens in our stores, is really how we get over that, you know, objection that people might have. Plus in our category, It's, it's— we have 600 brands sitting on our shelves or on our website, and beauty is about discovery. In order to really get that to the— get the right products in front of the guests, we need to curate the experience. We need—

if it's one-to-many, you're gonna get emails that they're like, I'm not that age, or that's not my style, it doesn't talk to me, right?

And people want it. So that's another way in which we can kind of overcome people wanting— they want to become part of our membership so that they can receive the curated, right?

It's ultimately about a value exchange.

It is.

And I think we're entering world where the days of one-to-many emails, one-to-many messaging are going to go away. I think consumers are going to increasingly expect hyper-personalization, the relevance and context of a message being built just for them. And if, especially if they're a loyal member— we just had the CMO of Sam's Club here, um, right before you came in. They're a membership company by, you know, that's their core business model, um, and they're saying they're investing so much in 2026 in personalization. I think by using these AI engines to understand the consumer, you can deliver a to them that really matters? Do they have kids or do they have a big event coming up? Are they getting married? What do they need? What are their needs for those occasions? And then can you deliver messaging that hits on that?

Exactly. Because gone are the days of traditional customer segmentation, right? Then kind of justifies what your messaging is going to be and then you batch it out. We're now in this mode of we don't segment based on those traditional demographics like 18 plus. I live in a sub—

Imagine that, the cookie cutter 18 to 49 demographic. Like that was yesteryear.

That's yesteryear. We are now day one right now. We are actually segmenting based on motivation. Interesting, because we do have all those signals. So we do understand that this is a shopper that really enjoys coming into our stores for the discovery, but they are replenishing with us online. They tend to buy skincare. We can then ascertain through data that the next likely category that we can introduce to them might be haircare.

Right.

So then we're teeing up messages about what's relevant to them right now, but what we think is going to be relevant to them and predictive for them. And that's when a consumer really starts to fall in love because they say, hey, you got— you know me, you understand.

True loyalty.

It does. It really does.

I would imagine that feedback loop also helps drive your shelf mix and your merchandising strategy as well, because you know what consumers want, what they gravitate towards, and you're going to want to put more of that on the shelves.

Correct. I mean, yes. So there's the guest-facing side to, as marketers, what we want to do and we want to perfect. But then of course there's all the downstream benefits of having really, really strong data and having 95% of all your, your data coming from members that allow you to be sharper about inventory and also just more efficient.

Yeah.

How you run the business.

So let's talk about building the brand, driving attention from your consumer, because obviously you have a great brand, you have loyal customers, but you are clamoring and fighting for attention with your customer across a multitude of categories and competitors, etc. You know, What does it take to break through in 2026 with creative, with content to make sure that you're capturing their mindshare?

Yeah, it's a great question. And when I stepped into the role last year as Chief Marketing Officer, the first thing that we did as a marketing team is let's reignite our brand's purpose. Let's remind the world why Ulta Beauty exists. That's right. Because that's why people are going to choose to come to Ulta Beauty in a crowded, in a crowded world. Like our category is very, very crowded. You can buy beauty in a lot of spaces. So we had to give people— we had to remind people, like, there's a reason why you come to Ulta Beauty, and it's because we celebrate the superpowers of beauty. That's what we are. In a lot of ways, we consider ourselves a lifestyle brand. We are about self-expression. We are about empowerment. We are about connecting multiple generations all on our store floor inside our 10,000 square feet. And we're also about taking care of yourself, this idea of self-care and wellness. And when you can find a spot within people's lives and you can play a role in people's lives in a meaningful way, that's when loyalty can truly start to begin. Yeah. And so that's really how we start the conversation about how do we grab attention, how do we distinguish ourselves. Then we make decisions around where do we show up, like where are we going to show up in our space? We have to be in social. We have to be shaping and supporting the conversation. There's no owning the conversation, but being a part of the conversation for sure. And then there's meaningful moments in culture that just make sense where beauty, culture intersect. We think that's music. We think that's sports. We see places that beauty and taking care of yourself really makes sense to activate and have an experience where we bring people in and they get to experience a little bit of Ulta Beauty in their element.

Yeah, a lot to unpack there. And one of the first things you mentioned was social. And this year, for the first time, the average age of a, of a first-time mother in the US is Gen Z, right? So that means she grew up with the iPhone in the household. She grew up consuming content looking like this. And of course, when she's consuming that content, It's not from traditional media sources, but from creators. So what role does the creator economy, influencers play in your strategy, and where are you stack ranking that as you enter a planning cycle in terms of where to, you know, devote resources towards?

It is, it is an undeniably important role that every marketer I think needs to be paying attention to. Then you layer on beauty in particular, because where does discovery happen, especially for Gen Z? And Gen Alpha, but across all— we're beauty for all ages, life stages. So we've got our eye on every single generation and what their habits are. And people go to social media to discover. And it's, you know, it's—

and be entertained.

And be entertained. I was just going to say, it's fun, right? And it's fun. So social media plays a really important role in our strategy and our planning. And creators in particular drive that authenticity and help us do what I was saying earlier, which is shape the conversation, participate in the conversation, but do it in the most authentic way.

That's huge.

That's huge. That's our path towards authenticity.

So another thing that you had mentioned was the notion of tapping in the passion points, right? Things that consumers care about and aligning your brand with it. So what are some of those franchises or partners that you are aligning with moving forward to help drive the brand forward?

There's so many options out there. I think that's, you know, we have to make a call on where we see that intersection of beauty and culture the strongest. And it's really music, number one. And it's number two, it's sports. And there are different reasons.

Sports, interesting, because that wouldn't have been the case maybe 10, 20 years ago as a female-focused brand. But you see the rise of like the WNBA and you're seeing so much interest in female sports.

You see interest in female sports. But what you also see is females that want to look good and play hard at the same time. Yeah, especially for the adults. But what I'm really passionate about in the sports angle is the youngsters, the young women. That are around, you know, 12 to 14, they actually defect from sports at twice the rate of young boys. And it has everything to do with their confidence and their, their, their, their feeling of, I don't know if it's okay to be tough.

Right.

And I don't—

it can feel counterculture almost.

It does. Yeah, it does. So if we, Ulta Beauty, can be a part of helping a 12-year-old, a 13-year-old, 14-year-old stay in sports, because they do feel confident, empowered. They do wanna show up on a soccer field wearing, you know, the headband and, and a face of makeup or the right, they have the right skincare in order to take care of their skin while they're playing hard. I think that's really our angle into sports.

I think confidence is so important. I mean, especially if you look at where the workforce is headed. I think, yeah, you know, I was giving a talk yesterday and I was saying, if you have to wait to be told what to do when you walk into work every day, your job's gonna become at risk. Yeah. Because by nature that means your job is deterministic, right? Automation. Yes. And I think, You know, the other side of that is you have to take initiative, right? And you have to actually drive impact. And I think a lot of younger people in the workforce just are wired to wait for permission. And I think especially young women, when they go into a corporate environment, maybe don't have that confidence to actually take initiative. And I want to hear how you've done it, right? Because you've ended up in the CMO seat. So you've obviously made a lot of the right decisions along the way. But how do you feel young women should approach the workforce, especially earlier in their career, to put themselves in the right position?

You know, the advice I always give anybody that I'm talking to, female, male, youngsters that are just starting out, is a couple of things. One is— this is going to sound strange, maybe— say yes to everything, especially when you're young.

Yeah.

Don't know what to say no to yet.

And like, you think you get invited to a dinner and you think you know who's going to be there and what's going to happen. But the reality is you have no idea. —And the worst thing you could do is say no, right? Yes.

So, that's the advice I always give. I think the other piece of advice, but this comes sort of later with a little bit of season, is leave with purpose, like intention, and really understand what the outcome is that you're looking to achieve. But I think that comes with a little bit of season in your career. Right about the 10-year mark is when you start to understand, say yes to everything for 10 years and then decide what you really want to start to narrow your focus and Yeah, you want to basically put as many—

take as many shots as you can early, see where the ball is going to bounce. And then once you zone in on what you really want to do, then you have to be choice of how you spend your time and the things that you focus on. Can't be experts on everything. So back on the, on the Ulta front, I know that wellness is sort of like a just a not a pivot, but it's just a broader, I guess, lens of the brand versus just beauty. Yes. Where do wellness and beauty collide? Why is wellness an important place for you to kind of expand your focus on. Yeah. Heading forward. It's great.

Yeah. You know, I'll take us back to COVID. We have to just one last time, right?

Of course. It comes up in every interview.

Does it really?

Yeah. It just shows how big of a seismic impact that has had on culture and business and society that here we are in 2026 and, you know, 4 or 5 years removed from it and still comes up in every conversation.

It does. Yeah. It does. We started to notice the importance of wellness and how wellness was starting to over-index or be prioritized within the beauty enthusiast beautyist's mind. So what they were doing is maybe there wasn't an opportunity to do a full face of makeup or do what our beauty lovers love to do, which is express themselves. You know, this is my night look, this is my day look. But what they were doing is they were really investing in their skincare, they were investing in their haircare, and that was starting to look like wellness as opposed to what we used to call beauty, right? Getting beauty products, which now fast forward 4 to 6 years later what we see is that beauty, actually the art of putting on makeup and what, what, what's inside the makeup is now geared towards wellness. So I like to say beauty is wellness now. Interesting. And wellness is beauty and all categories. This is skincare, this is haircare, even fragrance to some degree could be considered wellness. And then there's the wellness, uh, products that you might be thinking. The traditional, like, supplements that you might be— moisturizers, moisturizers and skincare supplements, collagen, things like that, that we want to continue to expand our assortment around. So for us, we have so much credibility stepping in the door of becoming the wellness destination for every beauty lover in the United States.

Yeah. And even here at CES, I mean, health tech is just a massive vertical we're seeing this year. And, you know, I think the notion of quantified self, which is taking data on your body that you're getting from all these wearables, whether it's your Oura Ring or your Eight Sleep mattress, right, or your Apple Watch, and then taking that data and analyzing it through the power of AI and giving you insights on your body and your health. I think it's going to explode moving forward. And the extent that you can kind of capture some of those tailwinds for your business, I think does drive new entrants in the category, new consumers, and just will create more growth for the business moving forward.

That is our hypothesis.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. We're aligned there. So Speaking of AI, obviously it is the year of AI here at CES. And as I've been coming here for 25 years in the past, you know, I remember when it was digital streaming was the big thing. I remember when the iPhone was the big thing. There's all these accessories. There was a whole world of like 3D, you know, 3D printing and 3D videos. And now it's about AI, which I think is far more substantive than all of those things. Yeah. How are you looking at AI as a leader, as a CMO, and what role does it play and how your organization and brand is going to go to market in the year ahead?

Well, we have to be thinking about AI. Yeah. And we are absolutely thinking deeply about AI. I think the thing we have going for us at Ulta Beauty is the data. So we talked about the 95%. One of— so I came 10 years ago and we've structured our data. That was the first priority. Let's structure our data in a way that allows us to leverage that data because we knew— and back then we weren't talking about— I think we might have been using the term big data at the time. We certainly weren't using the term automated marketing and personalization. Sure. Right. But we are now. We wanted to structure our data in a way that allowed us to leverage that data because we knew we wanted to do something with that data. So now we're well positioned to apply AI in a lot of different spaces to power our guest experiences. Like we talked about before, AI is behind that. So there's AI at its core, all the models that are kind of scoring our customers and understanding propensities. And it's the backbone of how we're able to deliver curated recommendations, for instance. That's a really big use case for us. But even, you know, generative AI and the spaces around creative, how do we more efficiently create creative so that we can tee the right image up or the right message up to the individual at the right time? We can rely on tools like generative AI in a real way going forward.

And sure, it's only going to get better. You know, it is doubling in its power and potency every 7 months. So if you think you do something well, that is going to do something incredibly well. Later this year, and you almost have to act and plan accordingly. Yeah. So given all that, what are the new types of skill sets you're looking for as a leader as you continue to build your team to make sure that you're bringing on people that have the right skills and tools to be able to take advantage of this new fascinating era that we're in?

You know, we talk a lot about, um, adaptability and AI adaptability in particular. Yeah. Because it's not the technology that's gonna take over the jobs, it's the human that knows how to use the technology that's gonna take over the jobs. That's, that's how we really believe. So in order, the capabilities you need, number one is I always look for a data-centered marketer. So I think gone are the days where there's, you know, you can just be that sort of creative. Yeah, big idea person. Right, right. We need to have data and that's true for our creative team. So even within creative, we're looking for somebody that understands data, somebody that understands technology like our generative, our AI Adobe platform that we're using, Firefly.

We have the Adobe CMO coming in next. Oh, do you really? Right after you.

That's very good. We're partners with Adobe. Yeah. So we committed to Adobe about a year ago. We've got their CDP in place. We're now leveraging their Firefly and we'll just continue to expand that. So in creative, like, you need to be able to adapt to technology and really understand how to use that technology and then accelerate it. So very much a test and learn, very agile mindset type of person. And the more curious, the better. And I think that's something you can't learn. That's—

Yeah. Curiosity. Yeah. You have to. Yeah. It's a lot of the skill sets you talked about, whether it's taking initiative, curiosity. You really can't teach. I mean, hopefully over time parents and, and educators will realize that the world's changed. It's not about memorizing, regurgitating facts anymore, but it's about these soft skills because that's what's going to be needed in the corporate world moving forward. Yeah. Yeah.

I think this is going to be an evolving topic though, honestly. I don't know if anyone has the, the real secret to how to hire people that know how to adapt to AI for business. Yep. I think engineering different. Yeah. Couldn't agree more.

So shifting gears, we wrap up. Colleen, it's been an awesome discussion. Would love to hear, you know, you'd mentioned earlier that you started your humble beginnings in oil, which I didn't know. And here you are, CMO of Ulta. Would love to hear about, as you look back on your career journey, what are some of the things that you think you did right along the way that put yourself in the CMO position now? And maybe some of that wisdom we can impart to our listeners so they can take some more paths.

Well, first of all, I would say I'm just truly grateful to be the chief marketing officer of Ulta Beauty. That's number one. Humble beginnings is is probably the right way to describe where I came from. And I, I just have a really strong work ethic. So that, that stayed with me in school and that stayed with me through college. I said yes for the first 10 years of my career to a lot of different opportunities. And lucky for me, BP at the time could provide that for me. Such a global company. And I was, I always say I probably had 4 different careers, right? While I was working at BP. And it just was a tremendous training ground for leadership management and, and operating a business at scale, which is amazing. So say yes to a lot of things. I think being a good person is the other thing. Kindness and, uh, being able to, to establish relationships with people, because you never know when you're gonna encounter that person again.

It's a small, smaller world than you think. And everything from leaving your job the right way to how people perceive—

all that stuff matters. So important. Yeah, so important. So don't underestimate the power of relationships because you're going to need them at some point. So even if you are in the big job, I always try to save time for people that want to have a conversation, especially if they're looking to make a job change or if they need help.

And that's when the relationships matter. That is a transition. When I started Suzy, the first 10 people I called were people who I was friends with that would be willing to take a leap on me. The people who I hired were people who I'd worked with in the past that were willing to join a startup they had never heard of. So like when you— when times of need, that's when relationships matter the most. And it actually fits really well with your suggestion earlier by saying yes, because the way you create relationships isn't by sitting at your home and watching Netflix.

It's by getting out there, doing this. Yep. Being at CES and, you know, it's uncomfortable sometimes to walk through, you know, one of those parties and networking events. Yeah. But what I find is most people, when you do put yourself out there, are really, you know, kind and, and, and graceful at accepting that and having an exchange. So make time for that. Yeah. That's really important.

I love that advice. Um, so we always wrap our podcast by asking our guests if there's a saying or mantra that's helped kind of encapsulate their professional journey today. And just wondering what comes to mind for you. Yes.

Um, impact over ego. Okay. I think that's, let's unpack that. Yeah. Let's unpack that. Why? Well, you know, I just found that, um, I'm very much a people-first leader and I'm about driving culture because if it's all coming from one person and it's always coming from the top, we're not gonna win. We gotta win as a team.. And so I just think leaving the egos, and that's true for not only the, the people at the top, but everybody in the organization. It's not your agenda, it's the company's agenda. We can find common ground. We can achieve your development goals at the same time while we're building a business, but leave your personal agenda, leave your ego at the, at the door, and let's really focus on what we're trying to do and, and make the impact happen.

And some people can't do that. Yeah. I mean, we've both encountered people where that it's always about them. And I think when you have people like that that are in your organization, that's when you have to make those hard decisions because it's like death by a thousand cuts in terms of building a culture. And you need people that are focused on the bigger, higher order goals of the business. And it doesn't— and with that, it's like a great idea can come from anywhere and doesn't matter what your title is. And all those things I think contribute to that impact over ego framework. Yeah, well, that's a great one. And I love that question because it always just kind of gives people a little bit of a, you know, a view of people, how people's mind works, like the thing that goes to. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining. It's been a fantastic discussion. I know CES is a very busy time to be in in the year, and I'm appreciative that you took a little bit of your time to spend with us on the podcast. It's so much fun. Awesome. Great. On behalf of Suzy and I, we team, thanks again to the great Kelly Mahoney, the chief marketing officer of Ulta Beauty, for joining us today. We're here live at CES in Las Vegas. We got more to come. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Speed of Culture podcast. On your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, see you soon, everyone. Bye-bye.