In-depth personalisation in Drupal for a large audience

A unique experience for every visitor

Vandemoortele's single most daunting business challenge was to engage, inspire and support a huge target group of different profiles to achieve their business goals.

Instead of two websites for bakers on the one hand and chefs on the other, we chose to hyper-personalise one big platform.

The platform is aimed at food professionals with businesses and cuisines of all kinds: from small catering businesses to high-level restaurants and industrial catering. And everything in between.

Using a MAP, we manage to segment that large target group and reach each and every one with a personalised selection of content.

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Challenge

Inspire and activate a large target group.

Solution

An all-in-one platform offering advanced personalised content to every segment.

About Vandemoortele

As a leading European group, Belgium's Vandemoortele manufactures and markets bakery products and Plant based Food Solutions. With numerous brands, Vandemoortele inspires professionals in the food industry. With more than 4,600 employees and operations in 12 European countries as well as the US and Asia, it recorded another turnover of some 1.7 billion euros in 2022.

Learn more about Vandemoortele

Personalisation to the max

Some people are thrilled by a french fry and others feel like they are in heaven with shortbread. Even though we are all human, everyone has their preferences and reacts differently to things. At vandemoorteleprofessional.com, we take personalisation right down to the details.

Under the bonnet

So how do we serve diverse audiences tailored content?

We wrote a personalisation algorithm that differentiates between target audience and channel. A target audience is linked to a professional role, such as chef, owner, barista, etc. A channel is the location or specific sector in which the target group works. Think bakery, company restaurant or snack bar.

The combination of these two variables makes a persona. Chef in a company restaurant, or owner of a bakery. To match the right interests to personas, we tag each content page with interest categories. For example, there are pages with a savings or vegan tag. By linking interests to personas, we deliver tailored stories and information to each specific audience.

For example, a restaurant chef will get to see slightly different content than a hotel cook. Or it could be a page block with a post on how to set up a takeaway business on the side. But it might just as well be a call-to-action offering a master class. Whether it comes down to a single image or a different word that is more common to the specific audience: everything is customisable.

How we approached vandemoorteleprofessional.com

Mobile first

The better you know your audience, the better you can personalise their experience. We know that food professionals rely almost exclusively on their smartphones to look something up. As a break between services, or in between work. So a seamless mobile experience was essential.

Subtle animation

We optimised user experience with many small microanimations and interactions, without distracting the visitor from the core content.

Custom-made

A smoothly running website is also important for those who will eventually have to manage and use it, and fill it up with content. A whole series of links with, among others, Vandemoortele's PIM system and customisation in HubSpot brought everything together in one ecosystem.

How did we achieve this in Drupal?

The more a visitor navigates through the website, including landing pages for a specific target audience, the more complete our picture of that visitor. As soon as we can assign a concrete persona, that visitor will see specific content. This makes a persona feel more engaged and connected.

On a more concrete note

Overviews of blog posts, videos, or other content are sorted according to your preferences.

In addition, media and paragraphs are each assigned to specific personas. If a visitor does not fit that persona, they get to see the default value.

To do that, we created a custom media entity where you can show a separate image or video per persona. And there is a mandatory default image. If the user belongs to a persona to which an image is associated, that image will be loaded.

To know exactly how we compile and calculate those personas, you'll have to come and apply first.

The HubSpot layer

If a user gives us permission, we also use data in HubSpot to personalise the experience. All the category preferences we discussed above exist in HubSpot as attributes.

If we got permission and users make themselves known, Drupal and HubSpot synchronise with each other. We get properties in HubSpot and set them in Drupal. We also sync in the other direction.

The DAM system: Bynder

In the platform, we have also linked up with Bynder, Vandemoortele's DAM system. For this, we use this contrib module.

Our team wrote additional logic to:

Expose Bynder media in the Drupal core media library
Generate images (Bynder CDN)

Our image styles we configure for the internal Drupal media define the dimensions we send to Bynder. We set up everything once, and what happens next is all automated.

Elasticsearch

For the search function, we use Elasticsearch. For this, we use the search API Elasticsearch and occasionally apply some custom logic to it.

Two examples:

What does the future bring?

The story of vandemoorteleprofessional.com is far from over. We are rolling out all personalisation features step by step. By continuously assessing and optimising, we try to help the target group even better and on an even more personal level. Initially, our focus was still on the Benelux, but in the future we will be looking to expand globally.

The partnership in figures

25,922

contacts reached during the first year

new countries for 1 target audience in 2023

2024:

rollout in 3 additional countries + bakery industry

An award-winning project

In 2023, this project won a Splash Award - Website of the year & Winner in category Corporate.

We couldn't be more proud of this recognition. It's a testament to our intensive collaboration with the client and the right blend of expertise and skills.

More awards that we've won