What is the delay for? Does Alfred use the clipboard behind the scenes to make the magic work?
Last week I've migrated away from TextExpander to use Alfred snippets instead. If noticed a few quirks since the change - and this one is by far the most annoying. If TextExpander works the same way behind the scenes, perhaps have a look at what their delay is, since I never had the issue before.
If you're interested in why it's problematic for me:
You can wrap text in Skype, similar to markdown, to use a monospaced font. {code}Hello World{code}
I have a snippet for {code}. 75% of the time I'll paste my clipboard in after using that snippet, but the other 25% of the time I'll hand-write some code. I could try to separate those into two distinct snippets, but it seems painful to re-learn, and for no real productivity gain.