Consumers now demand a high level of personalization throughout their buying experience. In fact, 71% of online shoppers expect brands to deliver custom-built communications and services, and 76% get frustrated when those expectations aren’t met.1
I recently joined Stord through the acquisition of my company, Penny Black, which specializes in AI-enabled, branded printed inserts that I now run as a service for Stord Unbox. These inserts allow brands to extend personalized experiences beyond the digital realm and turn an often overlooked part of the physical unboxing experience into a powerful moment that strengthens the brand-consumer relationship.
In a saturated and expensive ecosystem where consumer attention is fragmented, personalization has become the foundation of an unparalleled consumer experience. Almost half of consumers are more likely to become repeat buyers after relevant and targeted interactions with a brand.2 That means brands that capitalize on every opportunity to consistently deliver differentiated and unique experiences will see stronger engagement, higher conversion, and deeper customer loyalty.
Many leading e-commerce brands are already prioritizing personalization in their marketing efforts. They are leveraging browsing history, purchase behavior, and trends in engagement to refine product recommendations, adjust homepage content, shape promotional messaging, and more. These campaigns are also increasingly being customized to fit the nuances of specific industries. Preference-based quizzes are increasingly seen in apparel as a way to generate guided selections. Supplement brands are moving toward subscription models informed by individual usage patterns. And those in the Beauty and Skincare space are exploring interactive tools to create curated product routines based on unique customer profiles.
Driving much of this personalization at scale is AI. What began as a rule-based if/then logic in 2018 has evolved into an era of the “personalized economy”3 where companies harness real-time decision-making to gain a competitive edge. Today, over 92% of businesses report using AI to improve marketing performance and accelerate growth.4
As more brands adopt AI-powered personalized experiences, the next challenge is differentiation. The most forward-thinking brands are now pushing beyond basic if/then customization to create richer, more emotionally resonant experiences that connect with consumers throughout each stage of their journey.
Personalized Engagements that Power Conversion
Here are all the ways personalization can exist in each stage of the consumer journey, and where brands can make the biggest impact:
Digital Advertising
Brand discovery often begins with digital ads. This is the first point of contact and the first opportunity to establish relevance and emotional connection with potential customers. Personalization at this stage sets the expectations for a consistent, meaningful experience across browsing, consideration, and purchase. When done right, personalized ads can increase brand awareness by up to 80% and improve conversion rates by more than 30%.5
Moreover, consumers are 70% more likely to make a purchase after seeing a retargeting ad that feels timely and relevant.6 For example, a skincare brand that promotes a collagen-boosting night cream to 20,000 shoppers who previously viewed anti-aging products is far more likely to drive engagement, leading as many as 14,000 of those shoppers to become more inclined to purchase.
Personalized digital ads signal to the consumer that the brand understands them. They turn fleeting interest into action by showing the right product, in the right format, at the right time.
On-Site Personalization
Once a shopper arrives on your site, personalization shifts from capturing interest to influencing decisions. This is where brands must use real-time signals to build relevant, curated experiences that drive conversion. In practice, this might look like a beauty brand adapting its homepage based on a customer’s skincare quiz result or a supplement company displaying personalized subscription plans aligned with the buyer’s health goals. Even with growing concerns around data privacy, 79% of consumers are still willing to share relevant personal data in exchange for better product suggestions.7
On-site personalized product recommendations alone can lift average order value (AOV) by 10% and boost conversion rates by up to 49%.7 This means that for every 200 purchases, you gain up to an additional 100 orders by delivering dynamic, customer-centric content on your brand’s website.
Email Marketing
Email remains one of the most powerful channels in a brand’s personalization toolkit because its utility extends across the entire consumer journey. Pre-purchase emails can be used to send abandoned cart reminders, offer low-inventory alerts, or highlight trending items in a category the customer has previously explored. Emails can also dynamically reinforce confidence by highlighting estimated delivery windows, or include relevant cross-sell suggestions showing compatible accessories, bundling options, or upgrade offers tied to the product/s in the cart. In the post-purchase stage, brands can continue the conversation with order updates, product care tips, or curated recommendations and discounts to extend the customer’s relationship with the brand and encourage repeat purchase.
However, an email drives action only when its message feels personally relevant to the recipient. Compared to generic emails, subject lines that reflect user-specific context are 26% more likely to be opened, and personalized calls-to-action (CTA) generate a 202% lift in conversions.8 An email with a subject line, “Still thinking about those black leather boots?” or a CTA that reads, “Low stock on size 4 jeans. Order now before it’s gone!” can better capture attention and drive conversion precisely because they speak directly to the consumer’s unique shopping experience.
Text Messages
Similar to emails, personalized text messages can add significant value to each stage of the consumer journey. But unlike email, consumers treat SMS with greater sensitivity. Online shoppers mostly prefer to receive order and delivery confirmations or exclusive discounts and promotions via text. They are far less receptive to behavior-triggered messages, such as abandoned cart reminders or follow-ups based on site activity.9
With SMS open rates as high as 98% and the majority of messages read within three minutes10, it’s essential to tailor each text to reflect what customers actually want to receive. Irrelevant or excessive messaging can quickly lead to frustration and damage brand trust. This makes timing and frequency just as critical as content. Industry benchmarks suggest that 4-6 messages per month9 is a healthy cadence for most e-commerce brands, with optimal send times between 10am and 4pm local time, when conversion is at its peak.11
While these digital channels are essential for driving engagement and conversion, they represent only part of the end-to-end consumer experience. Each channel also comes with inherent limitations that can hinder the effectiveness of even the most sophisticated personalization strategies.
With ad blockers now mainstream, digital ads face growing resistance from consumers. Even when ads do get through, they are often ignored or skipped. Most consumers have been conditioned to tune out ads simply because they are ads – no matter how personalized or relevant they might be. Similarly, while online shoppers browsing through a site may be a captured audience, their interest doesn’t automatically translate to conversion. In fact, over 90% of consumers leave an e-commerce shop without ever adding an item to their cart.12 Personalized product recommendations on a dynamic webpage can certainly enhance engagement, but they should not be the only tools in a brand’s arsenal. Email and SMS are also facing increasing challenges around deliverability. Open rates continue to drop as inboxes grow more crowded and spam filters become more aggressive. Consumers are quick to ignore, unsubscribe, block – or worse, flag messages as spam at the slightest hint of being irrelevant, intrusive, or fraudulent.
These struggles and limitations across digital touchpoints reveal an often overlooked opportunity: personalization in the physical world. When a shopper opens their package, that tactile interaction with the brand becomes a fresh avenue to delight and deepen brand loyalty. With the rise of AI-powered personalization, the unboxing experience is evolving into a scalable, data-driven extension of your brand’s voice and one that can leave a lasting impression beyond the screen.
AI-Powered Personalized Unboxing Experiences
The unboxing experience is the only marketing channel with a near guaranteed 100% open rate.
It is a critical brand moment where personalization becomes tangible. This stage in the consumer journey is an opportunity to reinforce that your brand genuinely cares about your products and customers, and is invested in delivering delight throughout the end-to-end consumer experience.
Yet, this post-purchase moment remains an underutilized touchpoint for many e-commerce brands. That’s not surprising given that customized branded inserts are operationally complex and expensive to implement. By comparison, a single marketer with access to a platform like HubSpot can build dynamic, targeted campaigns using customer data in a matter of hours. Personalized inserts, on the other hand, require cross-functional collaboration between sales, marketing, operations, and warehouse teams. Making sure that the right message, with the right customer information, is printed on the correct insert and placed in the correct box at scale requires an integrated system that links customer data to physical fulfillment in real time.
However, even when opting for templated printed inserts, brands still have to face a difficult trade-off. On one end, highly personalized, white-glove inserts are only reserved for high-value consumers or select campaigns. They offer maximum impact but limited scale – and very rarely have any truly customized elements. On the other, generic inserts accommodate all customers and all buying habits but lack relevance and value.
The ultimate challenge had been scale versus personalization – until now.
With Stord’s recent acquisition of Penny Black, e-commerce brands are unboxing a new frontier in consumer experience: AI-powered hyper-personalized branded inserts.
By integrating leading AI-driven marketing tools with Stord Unbox, it is now possible for brands to enhance every order with custom-built messaging and offers that reflect each shopper’s behaviors, interests, and lifecycle at scale. Brands can see a 300% ROI within the first three months alongside a 25% AOV uplift just by adding personalized branded inserts to every package.
This premium unboxing solution works by leveraging AI tools to synthesize data across sales channels, CRMs, and order management systems powering intelligent campaigns. With dynamic, granular segmentation, each customer receives the right messaging, QR code, or video asset – all with little to no manual effort. The simple drag and drop editor makes it easy to build on-brand, compelling messaging for each customer in seconds. These personalized inserts are then printed on-demand at pack stations to deliver a differentiated unboxing experience.
A savvy brand, for example, could create a fully personalized welcome event for new customers using a unique QR code that leads to a custom landing page with a welcome message or video. This could feature the CEO, a recognizable brand ambassador, or simply dynamic content that says, “We’re so excited you’re here, Douglas! Here’s a 25% discount off your next purchase.” or “Hey Douglas, here are some products we think would be great with the stuff you’ve already bought.”
For products that require assembly, a QR code on the insert can direct the customer to a personalized support experience. Instead of a clunky, text-heavy printed manual or booklet, the customer could be guided through tailored setup instructions based on their available tools, time, and proficiency. The personalized webpage could prompt, “Hey, Douglas! Setup takes around 45 minutes, and you’ll need a Phillips head screwdriver to get started. If now’s not the right time, feel free to come back whenever you’re ready.”
This innovative solution, designed to directly integrate with existing CRMs and CDPs, makes on-brand hyper-personalization possible today. Stord is actively working toward enhancing these AI capabilities. In the near future, partner brands can expect AI to not only assist with the data management and audience segmentation, but also with the design and copy efforts needed to make these inserts even more unique. As these capabilities grow, it can power more channels with improved personalization, including digital ads, website experiences, emails and SMS messages, thus unlocking more powerful and scalable channels for delivering a hyper-personalized end-to-end consumer experience.
Scalable Growth with Hyper-personalization
The consumer experience is the sum total of every interaction a shopper has with your brand. From the first click through the unboxing and beyond, every one of those moments must be intentional, optimized, and personalized.
With advances in AI and data-driven marketing, e-commerce brands now have the tools to deliver holistic personalization at scale – across digital and physical. And with personalized packaging and unboxing experiences emerging as a new frontier for differentiation, the brands that invest in this arena will set the stage for what a connected, human-centric consumer experience truly looks like.
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