RESOURCES
The personalization paradox
NRF ’26 is all about moving from AI pilots to practical, scaled personalization across the retail journey, from targeted promotions to content that adapts per customer. Sessions from Microsoft, Adobe and Coca‑Cola are literally titled “Personalization at Scale,” and NRF’s own program highlights AI‑driven personalization as a main stage theme this year.
Yet many retailers still struggle. We know this because we keep hearing it again and again as we chat with retailers, brand teams, and agencies at trade shows like NRP’26: “We know personalization is essential… but it’s still too hard to do well.”
They’ve got the great data, they’ve got the strong ideas, they’ve got customers expecting experiences that feel tailored to them. But connecting all those dots in a way that’s consistent, scalable, and creatively on‑brand?
That’s where things often fall apart.
And that’s exactly the gap XMPie fills. Let us tell you how.
Digital behavior + tangible, personalized communication
If you’re a retailer you’re probably sitting on goldmines of data. XMPie can help you turn it into meaningful, personal moments across any channel, without asking your team to manually manage thousands of variants.
You already know so much about your customers: what they’ve bought, what they’ve browsed, what they almost bought, how often they shop, what they respond to, etc. And all of that is incredible fuel for highly personalized communications but only if you can activate it.
The XMPie Platform takes the customer data you already have and automatically turns it into individualized communications across digital AND, crucially, PRINT. In a retail landscape dominated by digital noise, XMPie makes it simple to produce highly personalized print – still one of the most trusted and effective touchpoints in the purchasing cycle. From loyalty pieces shaped by real preferences to reactivation mailers that reference a shopper’s last interaction, to offers and stories tailored to the individual rather than the demographic, XMPie ensures every communication feels timely, relevant, and genuinely valued.
For instance, you can connect your ecommerce interactions to personalized followups by triggering a personalized direct mail piece that reflects exactly what they did on your site and what they’re looking for. Someone might abandon their cart but still browse a category repeatedly to show high-intent behavior. Rather than sending an email that will inevitably get lost in their inbox, you can send a postcard with a tailored offer for the category they explored most. Or, if they completed a purchase, you might send a personalized thank you or suggestions for their next purchase.
Another example is to take the marketing back in the other direction by using the print touchpoint – the branded product packaging itself – as the trigger for a follow‑on digital interaction. With XMPie, dynamic elements such as QR codes, NFC tags etc. can be built into a single smart template, allowing you to generate unlimited variations of packaging or labels from data, rather than designing and maintaining separate files for every item. This saves significant time and production resources while ensuring accuracy and consistency.
Once printed, that data-driven packaging becomes a measurable omnichannel entry point – leading customers to tailored landing pages, post-purchase journeys, loyalty enrolment flows, personalized video and more. What was previously a static fulfillment asset becomes a hyper-personalized trackable trigger for immediate re-engagement.
Keep your creatives in Adobe Creative Cloud
Since its founding, XMPie has held a simple principle: creatives shouldn’t have to change the tools they love just to add personalization. That’s why XMPie works natively inside Adobe applications like InDesign and Photoshop, allowing designers to build personalized, data‑driven campaigns directly within their existing workflows.
Your team creates exactly what they want with no compromises and no file conversion and XMPie layers in the dynamic, personalized elements behind the scenes. Brands can be confident that there is always brand consistency, beautiful design, unlimited variations, without interrupting the creative process.
And because XMPie is built on an open architecture, it also integrates seamlessly with other systems in your tech stack, whether you’re connecting to ecommerce platforms, CRM data, or custom business processes.
And before you ask — it scales!
Whether you need one beautifully tailored piece generated instantly for a special customer or thousands of personalized communications across multiple channels for a national campaign, we’ve got you.
Our personalization engine isn’t limited by volume, complexity, or design. If your data can describe it and your designers can imagine it, we can scale it.
Of course, not every retailer feels fully “data‑ready,” and that’s a real barrier to personalization at scale. Customer information is often spread across ecommerce platforms, loyalty systems, email tools, and in‑store systems, making it difficult to activate consistently. XMPie is built with this reality in mind: its open architecture allows you to connect data from multiple sources and unify it behind the scenes.
Using AI? Of course you are!
XMPie is designed to be future-ready, which is why it plays so well with AI today. You can use AI-driven logic to increase relevance (think better offer selection and smarter timing) or bring in AI-generated content-assets created from existing customer data to produce personalized, context-aware text or imagery. XMPie handles the full orchestration and output across both print and digital channels.
And if you’ve seen our Forever Crimes demo — the tongue‑in‑cheek “marketing‑meets‑mischief” experience that builds a personalized criminal case file for every recipient using their own data – you’ve already seen how AI‑enhanced personalization can be both technically impressive and delightfully human.
Crucially, the AI integration sits behind your creative: your team still designs in Adobe, and XMPie turns data and decisioning into beautifully consistent, on‑brand communications at scale.
The big picture: In a crowded landscape, XMPie stands apart
Retail’s moving fast, but your customers are moving even faster. And they’re not shy about what they want. Research from McKinsey shows that 71% of consumers now expect personalized experiences, and 76% feel frustrated when they don’t get them. At the same time, marketers are rediscovering the impact of a channel many once considered old‑school: 84% say direct mail now delivers their highest ROI.
Put simply: customers want to feel recognized and the combination of smart digital signals with thoughtful, tangible printed communication delivers impact that digital‑only channels can’t match.
XMPie makes that possible by transforming the data you already have into genuinely hyper-personalized moments, triggered by any digital interaction – including ecommerce – and enhanced by AI‑driven decision‑making.
In a crowded personalization landscape, many platforms promise automated journeys or AI‑generated content, but most lock teams into proprietary editors or force them to rebuild workflows from scratch. XMPie takes a different approach. It brings true data‑driven personalization directly into Adobe Creative Cloud, letting designers work inside the tools they already use and love. Brands keep their existing quality, control, and design fidelity, while gaining enterprise‑grade personalization across both print and digital.
The result? Open‑architecture data integration, scalable automation, and full creative freedom. You can produce one VIP piece or thousands of variations with equal ease, without compromising designer workflow or asking marketers to replatform.
If you’re curious about what real personalization could look like for your brand, the kind that genuinely lands with customers, we’d love to show you what’s possible. Get in touch with our team using the form below.
