2nd Edition | Toronto
LEAD SPONSOR
November 21, 2025
LOCATION: OBA Conference Centre
10 Toronto, Street, Toronto, ON
The Science & Technology of Loyalty
The Emotional Influence of Rewards
The Power of Behavioural Analytics
An All-Keynote Senior Executive summit, located in the heart of Toronto’s corporate headquarter district, each individual speaker will addresses all delegates in a top-level format that ensures all attendees get the most impactful insights. Other speakers will also participate in panel discussions which provide deep-dives on data-driven loyalty, rewards, points, retail marketing, and ecommerce, including (but not limited to) strategy, platforms, analytics, forecasting, scenario planning, mobile solutions, predictions, digital transformation and AI-powered solutions.
Leaders in all aspects of data-driven loyalty and rewards will examine the workings of today’s consumer engagement and reveal the near-future in the ever-expanding, analytics-powered C-Suite. The universal torrent of data available today has become the foundational tool of informed decision making for marketers in all sectors, but none more than loyalty programs and rewards platforms. Data and the evaluation of data connects across department and functions. Each Keynote presentation and panel discussion will explore and reveal real-world, actionable paths to enable all aspects of the transformative power of million-member loyalty brands and consumer rewards.
If you attend you’ll get unique insights on the Analytics, AI Technology, Human Connections and Patterns of Customer Behaviour which Drive the Future of
Loyalty & Rewards Programs, Perks and Points Campaigns. You’ll also get to meet and mingle with some of the leaders of the loyalty, rewards and perks sector.
This upcoming event will address key considerations such as:
- Transition from transactional to emotional loyalty
- Personalization at scale (AI)
- Loyalty in the age of zero party data (as cookies disappear)
- Proving and demonstrating loyalty ROI and business impact long term to the C-suite. (Methodologies and biz cases)
- B2B loyalty evolution
- New Partnerships and Ecosystems
- Combating Loyalty Fatigue and Program Saturation (what’s next?)
- Informal loyalty (moving away from pronounced published programs
We will explore: Loyalty 3.0: The transformation of loyalty programs through marketing innovation and technology; The Evolution of Loyalty Programs: The shift from transactional rewards to emotionally connected experiences; Next Generation Loyalty Programs: The future of customer strategy and retention in the age of AI and hyper-personalization. A roster of speakers from major loyalty and rewards programs, cash-back rewards, perks and other customer-incentive programs will be announced shortly.
Are you a nonprofit or charity? Did you know that philanthropic organizations such as UHN Foundation are implementing forms of true loyalty and rewards programs? These concepts and program applications also include insights which help identify, acquire, retain and grow donor bases for all forms of nonprofits, charities and community foundations. Get the most up-to-date insights.
SESSION & BREAKFAST SPONSOR | ONSITE PODCAST COVERAGE
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS INCLUDE: (more coming shortly)
Candice Troupe, SVP Marketing and Partnerships, Scene+. Candice is responsible for the strategic planning, implementation and measurement of marketing and communications for Scene+ loyalty program. Troupe also leads growth and development for the partners network at Scene+, which includes program owners Scotiabank, Cineplex and Empire and brands such as Expedia, Home Hardware and Rakuten. Read a recent interview with Candice. As an innovative marketing and customer experience leader, Candice is recognized for transforming brands and driving growth both in b2b and b2c. Troupe’s depth of experience includes creating and delivering loyalty and data driven marketing programs including customer relationship management, digital transformation, channel product development, and ecommerce. With strong knowledge of loyalty, retail, payments, insurance, travel and transit, Troupe has a track record for ensuring informed strategy is paired with nimble, pragmatic execution to drive results.
Jacob Pullia, Director of Content, Strategy & Business Development at TELUS. Jacob Pullia leads the national TELUS Rewards program. Pullia discusses the launch of the unified national program, the strategic partnerships driving deeper engagement, and how TELUS is adapting loyalty to match the needs of a price-sensitive, digitally enabled consumer base. In a rapidly evolving telecommunications landscape, where customer choice and switching costs continue to shift, TELUS is rising above the noise. As Canada’s fastest-growing national telco, TELUS is redefining what it means to maintain loyalty—not just through connectivity, but by embedding value into every facet of the customer experience.
Jan Kestle, President, Environics Analytics. Jan Kestle has been a leader in the marketing information industry for more than five decades. An expert in using statistics and mathematics to help solve business challenges, she directed the initiatives that introduced the main segmentation system used in Canada Environics Analytics (EA’s) PRIZM® system, EA’s powerful ENVISION business intelligence platform, and has fully professionalized the melding of many different data sources and types into insightful statistics, including more recently, a variety of big data sources such as mobilytics and website usage (MobileScapes and ClickScapes). Over the years, she’s helped hundreds of customers—in industries ranging from finance and retail to the not-for-profit sector—turn data and analytics into insight, strategy and engagement. Before founding EA in 2003, Jan was president of Compusearch and spent 19 years at the Ontario Statistical Centre. Jan was recently awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Marketing Association and the GIS Leadership Award from BeSpatial Ontario.
SESSION: The New Loyalty – Data-driven and AI powered. Game changing innovations in AI and analytics are happening while loyalty program reinvent themselves. At the same time consumers are looking to make wise choices. Understanding shoppers’ drivers and motivators has never been more crucial…and it has never been more possible. Better data, better tech and the ability to measure results make this the time to scale up your programs – with the right partners and programs. If you are not leveraging data and AI effectively in what has quickly become a new world you cannot succeed.
this session will cover data, methods, governance and highlight examples of best practice.
Ory Adler, Partner, Innovate Marketing. Innovate Marketing is a boutique consulting practice for retailers and CPG brands that aims to help them capitalize on AI opportunities. Adler builds marketing programs that grow Loyal & Profitable customers. At Staples, he led the design and launch of Easy Rewards, driving comp sales and omni-channel growth. Previously, Ory played a variety of leadership roles in the launch of customer engagement, loyalty and offer targeting programs at Loblaw & Shoppers Drug Mart, Sainsbury’s Stores Ltd. and various other Retailers. As a former advisor to ciVALUE (acquired by Nielsen IQ) and having been deeply involved in the creation of data-driven personalization capabilities since the early 2000’s, he is able to blend real-world Retail Marketing experience with the practical application of Data & AI.
SESSION: Retail Loyalty in an Agentic World. Marketers’ ability to influence Brand Awareness, Consumer Choice and Loyalty are being disrupted by Agentic-driven changes in the Path to Purchase. In this thought-provoking session, Mr. Adler will run through dynamic examples of what Retail in tomorrow’s world may look-like, its implications on your team, processes, and financials as well as AI-enabled opportunities available now, that will also help your business prepare for an Agentic Commerce future.
Steve Shaw, VP Strategy, Kenna & Host, Customer First Thinking Podcast. One of Canada’s most respected and sought out speakers on loyalty and customer engagement, Shaw guides clients on the adoption of customer experience management as a core discipline and serves as an advocate of marketing transformation. Recognized in Canada as an authority on relationship and database marketing, his expertise spans from information technology and customer analytics to customer management strategy. Shaw also has a much-listened to podcast (CustomerFirstThinking) and writes regularly for DM Magazine. He has interviewed the most impactful and influential executives across the spectrum of data-driven marketing. Steve writes and conducts interviews regularly for each issue of DM Magazine.
SESSION: WHAT DOES TRUE LOYALTY EVEN MEAN? And how do you measure it? Few customers today would describe themselves as truly loyal to the brands they buy. Yet for mature brands 85 percent of their revenue will come from their most loyal customers. Just how loyal are those customers? How many of them are susceptible to switching, just waiting for a better deal to come along? How many of them would miss the brand if it disappeared from their lives? How many are simply buying out of habit? Or passiveness? Or convenience? Most brands have customers that span the loyalty spectrum – they just don’t know what that distribution curve looks like. And the Net Promoter Score only reveals who is most likely to recommend the brand – not how emotionally committed they are. To understand which customers are truly loyal, marketers need an integrated measurement equation which brings together the key metrics that matter. This session explores in depth how marketers can create a measurement system that will reveal which customers are truly loyal.
Richard Schenker, Founder & Chief Customer Engagement Officer, Loyal Strategy Consulting. Richard is a leading expert in the discipline of customer engagement. For three decades, he has been a strategic advisor to over 50 iconic brands across many key business sectors. Richard has designed, renovated, and managed world class loyalty programs, partnerships and customer experience solutions in the following sectors: grocery, pharmacy, athletic apparel, specialty retail, departments stores, fuel & convenience, quick service restaurants, financial services, automotive, travel & hospitality, food & beverage, and technology & entertainment. His experience and know-how is unparalleled in the industry and spans across proprietary, coalition, and partner loyalty programs. Prior to founding Loyal Strategy Consulting, Richard spent the first half of his career on the client side with Hudson’s Bay Company and Shoppers Drug Mart in high profile loyalty leadership roles. He was the chief architect of the iconic Optimum Program. During the next portion of his career, Richard held several senior loyalty leadership roles with LoyaltyOne, (owner and operator of the Air Miles Reward Program) and Bond Brand Loyalty. Richard is a renowned customer engagement author and contributor to many leading publications, podcasts and interviews.
SESSION: The Importance of Fortifying Emotional Brand Loyalty. In a marketplace overflowing with choice, brand loyalty can no longer be sustained by transactions alone; it must be felt. In a dynamic and insight-rich session, Richard Schenker, a strategic customer loyalty advisor who has guided over 60 leading brands across 10 sectors during his career, explores the human neuroscience behind how customers make brand decisions and why “emotion” is the most powerful driver of true brand loyalty. Through vivid brand examples and cross-industry illustrations, Richard will reveal how the most successful brands cultivate emotional connectivity with their customers that transcends transactional relationships. Attendees will discover the key emotional levers embedded in the world’s most effective emotional brand loyalty strategies and learn a practical framework for weaving emotional resonance into their own brand experiences to unlock the holy grail of enduring emotional brand loyalty.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, President of Shikatani Lacroix Design. The firm is a global branding firm specializing in transforming customer experiences for consumer packaged goods companies, financial institutions and retailers. With a thorough background in graphic design, Lacroix is a future-focused innovator who has been instrumental in assisting brands of all kinds to remain relevant. He is part of the Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario and has served as its president, sat on the board of the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers, Packaging Association of Canada and the Association of Professional Futurists.
Co-author of the best-selling book The Business of Graphic Design and author of The Belonging Experience and Desire by Design, Lacroix has been running design firms for the past forty-five years, the last thirty-five of them at his firm, SLD, helping manage the transformation of major organizations around the world. An accomplished dynamic speaker, he has lectured at numerous conferences across Canada, the US, Asia and South America on the subjects of branding and design trends. His presentations have always received high appraisals for content, energy, and take-away actionable information. Lacroix is also author of the newly released book ThinkBlink Manifesto: Creating Deep, Lasting Emotional Brand Connections in the Blink of an Eye.
SESSION: From Transactions to Transformations: Elevating Loyalty Through the ThinkBlink Manifesto. This session explores how brand leaders can power a new era of loyalty and rewards by shifting focus from transactional program features to deeply felt emotional connections. Using the ThinkBlink Manifesto’s seven tenets, the presentation demonstrate how brands can deliver memorable, meaningful engagement in the blink of an eye—driving lasting customer commitment in a data-driven, AI-powered marketplace. Attendees will discover how emotional loyalty becomes the foundation for measurable impact and future-proof customer strategies, aligning with conference themes on personalization, analytics, and the emotional science of rewards.
Three Audience Takeaways:
• Unlock Emotional Loyalty: Discover how to move beyond points and perks to build loyalty programs that foster genuine emotional bonds with customers—using ThinkBlink principles as practical tools for real-world transformation.
• Leverage Data with Heart: See how behavioral analytics, AI, and pattern recognition can be infused with emotional branding strategies, driving both personalization at scale and authentic human connection.
• Future-Proof Your Brand Loyalty: Gain a proven framework to combat loyalty fatigue, inspire true commitment, and measure long-term business impact—making your loyalty program indispensable in a noisy, choice-saturated market.
More Speakers and Panelists coming shortly…
DM Magazine Presents a One-Day, Senior Executive Forum
CONFERENCE TIMETABLE & AGENDA
7:45 am | Registration, Breakfast, Networking
8:30 am | Welcoming Remarks, Morning Keynote by Jan Kestle, President, Environics Analytics
9:30 am to 12:30 pm | Super Session Keynotes
12:35 pm | Luncheon, Networking | Fireside Chat
2:00 pm to 3:45 pm| Super Session Keynotes
4:00 pm to 5:00 pm | Super Panel Discussion with Loyalty Leaders
5:00 pm to 5:30 pm | Wrap Up | Networking
Watch for more confirmed speakers coming shortly…
The OBA Conference Centre at 20 Toronto Street (King & Yonge) is a strategically-located event space that offers one of the most immersive and technologically advanced facilities. DM magazine and our other publications have staged senior-level events at the OBA for many years and always receive warm praise for the choice of venue. There are discounts for group or team registration.
Standard Registration Fees (Apply after October 10th)
Single Delegate: $495.00
Dual Delegates: $850.00 (Rate is for two delegates from the same organization.)
Group Delegate Rate: $1155.00 (Rate for 3 individual delegates from the same organization).
Each additional delegate up to 5 is $200 pp
More than 5 delegates? Email Steve Lloyd steve@dmn.ca for rate options.
*NOTE: All rates are plus GST/HST (You May Register Now and Pay by C/C and receive a receipt and confirmation (click on image) | or Register and Request Invoicing and we will send confirmation your registration request is received along with an invoice, and you may then send payment by C/C, EFT or Interac to confirm.
OR REGISTER AND REQUEST INVOICING HERE
Find out more or if you have other questions… Let me know and I’ll get back to you quickly. Steve Lloyd, Publisher & Editor in Chief, DM Magazine and Total Finance Magazine. steve@dmn.ca
P: 905-201-6600 | C: 416-919-7076