Versele-Laga: achieving digital maturity

Versele-Laga is a well-known international producer of high-quality pet nutrition and care. They started out as a small family business in 1932, and today, their nutrition is sold in over 86 countries. From Europe to the US and China – Versele-Laga is well on their way to world domination. Did you know that they feed over 15 500 000 animals daily?!  

In 2018, Versele-Laga was looking for a new Sitecore partner to develop a web platform for one of their daughter companies. Since then, we worked with Versele-Laga on many different projects, achieving digital maturity for Riga, Welcome Home Nature, Volys and Versele-Laga.  

Versele-Laga & brands – the context 

Versele-Laga was looking for a multi-lingual, multi-brand and multi-country website. In other words: they needed a place for a lot of personalized content.  

Volys, a Versele-Laga daughter company, specializes in tasty ready-to-eat products based on chicken and turkey. In preparation of their 75th anniversary, they wanted to launch a new website as well. 

Riga is another Versele-Laga daughter company. They are a manufacturer and distributer of animal food & accessories, operating out of the north of France. With their new website, Riga wanted to build a closer relationship with their customers.  

Versele-Laga also launched Welcome Home Nature, a content platform for animal lovers. Community members have access to articles, tips & tricks, and various competitions.  

All these websites are live now and we are working on the next initiatives on the platform, as well as the upgrade to Sitecore 10.1, which will go-live in Q2 2021. 

The challenge

The goal for Versele-Laga is to create awareness and consideration for B2C customers, in order to nurture them to their dealers in (pet) stores. This means that the platform does not only have B2C KPIs, but also B2B KPIs in terms of lead generation towards the Versele-Laga dealers.  

Because Versele-Laga products are distributed internationally, the platform needs to be able to market their products in the correct manner for each region. The content base is the same, but slight personalisation needs to be possible to carry out the right tone of voice for each region.  

Of course, using the Sitecore Experience Platform personalization techniques, we can take into account the intent of the visitor (e.g. which animal type is the visitor interested in), based on the previous interactions on the websites on the platform. 

To create awareness, not only product information is suitable to be presented, but also information about how to take care of your pets, tips and tricks and content that speaks to the different audiences. For example, people that take care of horses need another experience than people with a dog or people that participate in pigeon races. 

Our solution 

By using the full potential of Sitecore’s Experience Platform, Versele-Laga can set up personalized experiences with the right content at the right moment based on the context the visitor is in. We set up predictive profiling based on animal type and personalization rules to personalize content based on the region.   

By using Sitecore Forms and Marketing Automation, Versele-Laga can nurture the visitor to the next goal in the Engagement Value Pyramid by offering the right personalized experience. This enables Versele-Lage to offer the customers the same experience and consultative content as they are used to in a physical store: by analyzing the visitor’s navigation behavior and research behavior we can offer them the right content to decide in their buying journey. 

Next to brand websites, we have set up a global corporate website and the Welcome Home Nature website. The goal of the Welcome Home Nature website is to create content with information for visitors to create awareness and guide them in their animal care journey.   

Here, we apply predictive profiling techniques to personalize both the Welcome Home Nature website and the global corporate website. Visitors get a more personalized experience resulting in more qualified leads to the dealers.   

Transforming digital experiences towards digital maturity  

Versele-Laga & brands are reaching digital maturity. They generate more brand awareness, traffic to their websites, and ultimately, more leads and revenue.  

Thanks to their extensive use of personalization and profiling, they are able to offer an online experience that matches the offline overall feel: we care for your animals like you do, by offering personal advice based on your needs.   

Are you interested in offering a personalized experience to your (international) audience? Let’s talk!