At Loyalty Expo, Marie DeLeo, Senior Director of Strategic Consulting at Kobie, challenged attendees to rethink how they approach personalization and customer engagement. During her session, "Why Timing Is the New Targeting," DeLeo argued that while brands have become increasingly sophisticated in delivering personalized messages, many are still missing a critical component of relevancy: knowing when to engage customers.
Drawing on both consumer research and real-world examples, DeLeo explained that customers now expect a level of specificity that goes beyond traditional segmentation and personalization. Rather than simply identifying who a customer is, brands must understand where that customer is in a particular moment and whether they are ready to act. According to DeLeo, even the right offer, delivered through the right channel to the right audience, can fail if it arrives at the wrong time.
“When your personalization is falling short, can you identify whether you had the wrong message or the wrong moment?” she asked.
DeLeo noted that “every piece of customer intent has a signal” that brands should be paying attention to so they can time their messaging with more precision.
“There’s a moment when that signal appears, when the customer is ready,” she said. “They’re browsing, they’re researching, they’re comparing. They’re in motion.”
This is the moment when a window has opened for brands to target customers with the message they’re trying to get across to them, according to DeLeo.
“In that window, the customer is reachable, they’re persuadable,” she said. “The right message at the right moment produces an outcome. When the window closes, when the decision is made, the moment is gone.”
This means if a brand’s message happens too early, it won’t land because the customer isn’t ready yet. If a brand shows up too late, the messaging will no longer be relevant to the customer, DeLeo noted.
The session also explored how emerging AI-driven decisioning tools can help brands move beyond scheduled campaigns and lifecycle marketing toward real-time, signal-based engagement. By leveraging customer behaviors, contextual cues, and evolving customer states, brands can identify moments of intent and respond with greater precision. The goal, DeLeo noted, is to shift from viewing customer identity as a static record to treating it as a continuously evolving relationship.
“For decades, personalization has been designed from the brands’ point of view, and we built it and we operationalized it,” DeLeo said. “We invested in CRM systems to help manage it, but those systems were for execution and workflow, not to hold that moving customer relationship. The shift to agentic decisioning is a shift to a customer operating model.”
The session encouraged attendees to evaluate whether their loyalty programs are built around brand-driven calendars or customer-driven moments. As customer expectations continue to rise, DeLeo emphasized that brands that can combine personalization with precise timing will be better positioned to deliver meaningful experiences, drive engagement, and build stronger long-term loyalty.
This session is open to Loyalty Expo attendees and Loyalty360 Brand Members. To watch the full video, click here.