Sharif Kotb, MENAT, Area Vice President, BrazeEvery year, Ramadan tests whether brands truly understand the people they serve – not just culturally, but behaviourally. It’s about how routines shift, when attention spikes, and what “good service” feels like when everyone is buying, gifting, travelling, and spending more time on their phones.
For brands across the GCC the challenge is no longer just being seen – it’s about responding to the “digital body language” of a highly connected, mobile-first audience in real-time.
To win in 2026, brands must move beyond static campaign calendars and embrace AI decisioning to navigate the unique rhythmic shifts of the Holy Month
Tickets to Campaign Middle East’s Ramadan Breakfast Briefing & The Year Ahead event are selling out fast. Click here to claim your seat for Friday, 13 February to network with and listen to top clients and agency leaders.
The three forces shaping Ramadan 2026
The night-time economy is the engagement economy, especially in Saudi Arabia
If your messaging, staffing, and fulfilment cadence still assumes daytime peaks, you’re planning for the wrong customer. CST points to 9:00pm–11:00pm as peak usage hours. This isn’t a “send-time optimisation” problem, it’s an operating model issue. The brands that win will align creative, media, CX, and logistics around the hours people are actually active.
The nuanced rhythms of “live” data
Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) reporting shows e-commerce is not only growing; it’s growing fast: e-commerce transactions using mada cards rose 56.0 per cent YoY in Q1 2025 and 65.9 per cent YoY in Q2 2025. When e-commerce is scaling at that pace, customers become less tolerant of friction: unclear delivery promises, weak inventory visibility, confusing returns, or repetitive messaging that ignores what they just did.
Emotional intelligence is now a performance lever, not a brand flourish
Emotional resonance remains vital, but in 2026, emotional intelligence must be backed by technical precision with AI-enabled execution, using customer signals (“digital body language”) to respond, not just broadcast. In Ramadan, this is the difference between being present in a meaningful way and being “another notification.”
The advisory playbook: what to do differently
Deploy “always-on” testing:
Ramadan is a sequence of shifting mindsets, moving from preparation to generosity and gifting, then into Eid urgency, and finally the post-holiday reset. Customers switch channels and make decisions quickly during this period, and they expect brands to respond in step. Build engagement around customer triggers such as browsing, cart activity, replenishment cycles, back-in-stock moments, delivery ETA updates, and loyalty milestones, rather than relying only on scheduled promotional campaigns.
Design for night-first attention:
In Saudi Arabia, anchor your highest-intent messages to the evening peak, and reserve daytime for lighter utility: order updates, wishlists, preference capture, and service cues. A night-first approach is also culturally aligned: it respects real routines rather than imposing a corporate calendar.
Engage the anonymous majority:
Don’t ignore the silent majority. During the Ramadan rush, traffic spikes – but much of it is anonymous. Using advanced AI algorithms, brands can now analyze the “digital footprints” of unknown visitors in real-time. By predicting intent based on browsing behavior, you can deliver personalized offers that guide anonymous browsers toward their first conversion.
Use conversational channels as service, not spam:
WhatsApp and direct messaging perform best when the content is genuinely helpful. Braze’s own guidance points to strong engagement outcomes on WhatsApp, including a Floward example of a 55% WhatsApp read rate, reinforcing that relevance is the multiplier.
Don’t go quiet after Eid, this is the retention window:
The most successful brands don’t treat Ramadan as a 30-day “flashpoint.” They use it as a springboard for the rest of the year. As the region moves into Eid and beyond, use dynamic segmentation to adjust strategies. As routines shift back to normal, your AI agents should autonomously learn these new habits, transitioning from “Ramadan mode” to “Post-Ramadan replenishment” seamlessly.
Ramadan 2026 will reward brands that treat engagement as a relationship discipline: culturally fluent, operationally reliable, and triggered by real customer signals in real time. What differentiates brands is not access, but attention earned through relevance, consistency, and respect for real customer behaviour.
By Sharif Kotb, MENAT, Area Vice President, Braze
