The future of digital experiences are AI-powered, composable, and built to win

Customers today don’t just expect great digital experiences — they demand them. They want content that speaks to them personally, delivered instantly, on their terms.

For marketing teams, this presents an enormous challenge because achieving personalization at scale requires infinitely more content than marketing budgets can realistically support. And with AI accelerating both content creation and customer expectations, the pressure to deliver only grows.

Our customer Michael Luzmore, Product Manager at Docusign, frames up the challenge perfectly. "The expectations for growth teams have changed, with users expecting more relevant and engaging marketing experiences,” Michael said. “To be successful, we needed to scale personalized experiences to global audiences.”

AI promises to help brands solve this challenge. With its ability to generate limitless content variants and handle time-consuming (and typically cost-prohibitive) tasks like translation and localization, brands increasingly rely on AI to produce the volume of content required to reach consumers with hyper-targeted, personalized experiences.

As OpenAI’s Sam Altman put it, “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI.”

That’s not just a shift in efficiency — it’s a fundamental transformation of how marketing teams operate. AI is already automating high-volume content production, from blog posts and landing pages to digital ads, translations, and product catalogs. And as global, multi-brand companies spend billions annually on marketing, even incremental efficiencies could translate into massive cost savings and competitive advantages.

There’s a catch with legacy DXPs

But there’s a catch. Two catches actually.  

The first is that without strong content operations and governance, AI-generated content can quickly spiral into chaos — misaligned messaging, disjointed experiences, and an erosion of authenticity that weakens consumer trust. Traditional content workflows were built for a world where humans created 100% of the content.

But now, AI is shifting that balance — machines will generate the majority of content at a fraction of the cost, while humans focus on strategy, creativity, and refinement. This fundamental shift in workflows requires a new kind of infrastructure — one that doesn’t just scale production, but ensures AI-driven content is high-quality, on-brand, and seamlessly integrated into the customer journey. Without it, brands risk fragmentation, inconsistency, and lost control.

But the second challenge is even more daunting. AI is evolving exponentially, and we’re only at the beginning of the innovation curve. Today’s most advanced AI tools weren’t on marketers’ radars two years ago, and two years from now, entirely new capabilities will reshape the landscape again. The brands that win won’t be the ones scrambling to reactively bolt on new technologies; or worse yet, rip and replace their tech every few years. They’ll be the ones with a flexible foundation that allows them to experiment, integrate, and evolve as AI advances.

Herein lies the problem with legacy DXPs. 

The very solutions that were supposed to help brands keep pace are now holding them back. They’re bloated, inflexible, and outdated — built for an era where monolithic systems were the only option, rather than today’s composable, AI-powered reality.

At Contentful, we’ve always believed in a different approach. Having pioneered the idea of composability with our market-leading headless CMS, our vision for the future of digital experience is rooted in flexibility and extensibility. Every company’s so-called DXP will be unique —  handcrafted from best-in-class vendors and emerging technologies that match their specific needs. 

Of course the key to this strategy is ensuring all of these components work seamlessly together. And while we might be biased, we believe a natively composable CMS should be at the core of any future-fit  DXP. Why? Because content remains the foundation of every great digital experience. And in an AI-powered world, brands are going to be managing more content than ever before — not less. 

That’s where Contentful comes in. Unlike traditional DXPs that force companies into rigid workflows that slow down innovation, Contentful takes a different approach. Our platform is built for speed and agility — giving marketers and developers alike the flexibility to create, optimize, and personalize digital experiences at scale so they can stay ahead, no matter how AI evolves.

Cut through the noise with AI

Contentful’s AI-native platform makes it easy to deliver experiences that feel tailor made to each customer.

Today’s news: AI-powered personalization and composability

From our roots as a headless CMS beloved by more than 4,200 companies, we’ve continually evolved to meet the needs of modern marketing and development teams. Last year, we introduced Contentful Studio, a drag-and-drop visual builder that allows non-technical users to create new digital experiences, without relying on dev teams. This gave teams the ability to move faster and iterate freely — without waiting in the queue.

Today, we’re taking that a step further.

We're launching Contentful Personalization — now a fully integrated experimentation and personalization solution that puts control directly in the hands of marketers. Unlike legacy platforms that require complex, siloed personalization tools, Contentful Personalization brings everything into one unified workspace.

Marketers can now create, test, and optimize personalized experiences across all channels — without disrupting workflows or relying on technical teams. And with seamless data connections from platforms like Shopify, Klaviyo, and SAP Emarsys, brands can activate third-party data to deliver truly relevant, engaging content.

Furthermore, to help marketers create enough relevant content to fuel these personalized digital experiences, we’re introducing a suite of AI-native capabilities:

• AI Actions automate repetitive but essential tasks, such as localization and one-click search engine optimization, freeing teams up to focus on higher-value creative and strategic work.

• AI Variant Generation enables teams to instantly generate on-brand content variations, making personalization truly scalable, while maintaining consistency.

• AI Suggestions to make contextually appropriate recommendations for audiences, experiences, and content variants, taking the guesswork out of personalization and experimentation.

Finally, we’re proud to announce a strategic partnership with Shopify  — one that redefines how brands connect content and commerce. By combining the best of Contentful’s composable platform with Shopify’s ecommerce capabilities, our joint customers can now seamlessly manage and optimize every touchpoint of the customer journey — directly within their existing workflows.

The future of digital experiences starts now

When we first launched Contentful over a decade ago, we saw a better way to manage content in an omnichannel world. Today, we’re taking that same pioneering spirit and applying it to the broader digital experience. 

We are not just a CMS. We are not just another DXP. We are the future of content-powered digital experiences. 

To every marketer, developer, and digital leader out there: this is your moment. The opportunity to create more engaging, personalized, and high-performing digital experiences has never been greater. But it requires the right technology — the kind that removes barriers instead of adding them. 

That is exactly what we are building at Contentful. And we cannot wait to see what you create.

Let’s build the future of digital experiences, together.

Take a tour

Chat with our team

We'll show you how our composable content platform can enhance 1:1 customer connections and drive growth for your business.

Subscribe for updates

Build better digital experiences with Contentful updates direct to your inbox.