Ulta Beauty started the fiscal year with strong performance. According to company disclosures, despite ongoing economic pressures on consumers, net sales increased 11.1% year-over-year to $3.2 billion, with broad-based growth across all channels and major categories. Company executives partially attribute this success to effective execution of marketing strategies.

Leading this growth is Kelly Mahoney—recently named one of Forbes' 'Most Influential CMOs' globally. Mahoney joined Ulta in 2015 and was officially appointed Chief Marketing Officer last year after holding several key marketing roles. Since taking office, she has rapidly advanced multiple brand-building initiatives and partnerships that have both elevated brand influence and directly contributed to business growth.

'The best marketing combines bold creativity with data, technology, and cultural relevance to build meaningful connections with customers that drive long-term loyalty,' Mahoney told Marketing Dive in an email interview. 'At Ulta Beauty, this means integrating first-party insights, personalized recommendations, social media, creator resources, media investment, PR, and brand storytelling into a cohesive consumer experience—sparking discovery, deepening emotional connection, and delivering measurable business results.'

Marketing Dive spoke with Mahoney in depth about Ulta's cultural marketing initiatives, retail media and TikTok Shop channel strategies, experiential marketing efforts, and more.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Marketing Dive: How does the partnership with 'Supergirl' reflect your marketing strategy?

Kelly Mahoney:Our collaboration with DC Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures around 'Supergirl' is rooted in a shared belief: beauty is about confidence, self-expression, and embracing what makes you unique. Through immersive in-store experiences, exclusive product collaborations, digital content, and an advertising campaign featuring Milly Alcock, we invite customers to create their own 'rebel girl beauty.'

On a broader level, this reflects our overall approach to marketing strategy. 'Beauty Happens Here' is our creative North Star. It embodies our belief that beauty happens every day—both in quiet daily rituals and in bold moments of self-expression. This philosophy guides how we connect with customers across culture, commerce, and community.

We view cultural relevance as a long-term strategy, not a series of isolated short-term activations. Every partnership is designed to spark discovery, build community, and deepen relationships with customers.

How do you think about building the Ulta Beauty brand and partner brands simultaneously?

These two goals are deeply interconnected. Every experience that strengthens our relationship with customers also creates value for partner brands. Our role is to integrate discovery, inspiration, and trusted guidance to create value for every party in the ecosystem.

We build the Ulta Beauty brand by earning relevance every day—through personalized experiences, authentic engagement with culture, and helping customers discover the products, brands, and services that are right for them.

For brand partners, our value extends far beyond shelf placement. With the massive membership base of Ulta Beauty Rewards, deep first-party insights, the UB Media retail media network, and our omnichannel ecosystem, we help brands reach highly engaged beauty and wellness enthusiasts in more personalized, measurable, and meaningful ways.

As the retail media landscape evolves, how are you leveraging first-party data from your loyalty program to drive UB Media?

Our Ulta Beauty Rewards program and first-party data enable us to deliver more relevant, personalized experiences for both customers and brand partners. With nearly 47 million members contributing approximately 95% of company sales, the loyalty program is the cornerstone of our customer relationships—helping us understand what customers love, how they shop, and how they want to engage.

At the heart of this ecosystem is our proprietary technology, Beauty Graph. It learns from customers' browsing, search, purchase, and sharing behaviors to develop a deeper understanding of their beauty and wellness journeys. These insights help brands reach highly engaged audiences at the right moment with messages that resonate.

Through UB Media, we translate these insights into more targeted, measurable campaigns that drive discovery, consideration, and conversion. Ultimately, first-party data helps us create better experiences for customers while enabling brand partners to make smarter, more effective marketing investment decisions.

How is Ulta positioning TikTok Shop as an acquisition channel rather than just an e-commerce channel?

We were the first prestige beauty retailer in the U.S. to join TikTok Shop because we see it as far more than just another e-commerce channel. TikTok Shop is where beauty discovery is happening—it allows customers to move more seamlessly from inspiration to purchase while enabling us to reach new audiences in a platform-native way.

Our focus is on customer acquisition and brand building. TikTok Shop creates opportunities to introduce new customers to the Ulta Beauty ecosystem through creator-led storytelling, education, and discovery. It complements our broader omnichannel strategy, expanding the ways customers engage with Ulta Beauty across digital and physical touchpoints.

At the same time, it creates new opportunities for brand partners. Through curated assortments, exclusive sets, creator collaborations, and TikTok-first marketing moments, we help brands build awareness, drive discovery and trial, and connect with consumers in ways that reflect today's beauty shopping experience.

How are you leveraging creators through the Ulta Beauty Collective?

Creators play an increasingly important role in beauty discovery today, but trust is paramount. Our customers expect authentic inspiration, education, and product recommendations from creators. That's why we built the Ulta Beauty Collective—a curated, year-round partnership model working with carefully selected creators who genuinely reflect Ulta Beauty's brand values and the diverse beauty journeys of our customers.

We view creators as an extension of the Ulta Beauty experience. Alongside our associate ambassador program, Ulta Beauties, and broader creator partnerships, they help bridge the gap between discovery and trust. A customer might discover a product through a creator on social media, then visit our stores to explore it with our associates. This seamless experience helps us meet customers wherever they are in their beauty and wellness journey while building more authentic, meaningful connections with brands.

How do you see experiential marketing, such as Ulta Beauty World and new stores, fitting into your marketing flywheel?

Beauty discovery is deeply personal and constantly evolving, so we look at the entire ecosystem—whether social, digital, AI, or in-store—to personalize how customers explore and purchase beauty and wellness products. In the past year alone, we hosted over 100,000 in-store events, including brand activations, birthday parties, and salon services, in addition to large-scale immersive experiences like Ulta Beauty World. Because we know that in-person touchpoints have powerful potential to deepen connections with beauty enthusiasts.

Our new flagship store in New York's Times Square will further elevate our storytelling and customer connections, with immersive event activations at its core. These personalized touchpoints authentically position Ulta Beauty as the ultimate beauty destination, naturally creating opportunities for community engagement, user-generated content, and brand loyalty.

Brands like e.l.f. have seen tremendous success with women's sports marketing. Where are the opportunities within the Ulta Beauty Roster program?

It's no surprise that beauty brands are aggressively moving into women's sports, going beyond traditional endorsement models—because these partnerships celebrate high performance, confidence, resilience, and individuality.

We see an opportunity to drive change through the Ulta Beauty Roster program. This initiative brings together six remarkable female athletes from established and emerging sports. By sharing the habits, rituals, and moments that help them perform at their best on and off the field, they are redefining what it means to compete while using their platforms to create positive change in their communities.

This need is real. Research shows that over one million girls who identify as 'sports-loving' in elementary school gradually drop out of sports during adolescence. So our goal goes beyond representation—it's about helping more girls stay in the game by increasing visibility, creating opportunities, and investing in the future of women's sports.