SuperVista is revolutionizing the eyewear industry by combining in-person services with personalized digital experiences. As the first full-digital hybrid optical in Europe, SuperVista offers a more convenient and cost-effective way for customers to order prescription glasses. 

SuperVista supports over 1,300 independent opticians in Germany, Austria, Spain, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Japan, and performs thousands of eye measurements every day. 

With new external pressure from COVID-19 and a growing customer base with increasingly high expectations, SuperVista was forced to rethink its entire business model to meet the changing needs of their customers. They decided to stay competitive and increase efficiency by fully embracing a digital transformation. 

One of the first priorities? Improve their email program, especially email deliverability. SuperVista was sending millions of emails at critical moments of the customer lifecycle. Even a small improvement in deliverability would offer a direct short-term impact on revenue.

Rethinking their messaging infrastructure

Before landing on Bird, SuperVista had always taken a developer-first approach. But with engineering teams so focused on building a stand-out product, customer experience and communication improvements often ended up on the back burner.

This meant that every communication update had to be implemented by a technical engineer, slowing down the roll-out process to customers, preventing rapid iteration, and making it difficult to troubleshoot issues in an efficient way.

“Bird is unlike other companies. Usually, you only get fast responses before buying the tool. With Bird it has only gotten better after signing.” — Peter Wieczorek, Chief Technology Officer, SuperVista

The search for a future-proof communication platform

SuperVista’s immediate priority was email deliverability, but their strategic outlook extended well into the future. They evaluated tools against the following criteria.

• Knowledgeable support: Personal contact whenever needed. Not just to troubleshoot, but also to share best practices and help develop their digital strategy.

• No-code tools: Products that would enable the teams that own customer communication to make changes without having to wait for engineering resources.

• Reliable infrastructure: A proven track record of handling very large volumes of traffic and email with the ability to scale up and down on command.

• Fast iteration: SuperVista wanted to find a partner who could enable them to iterate quickly. Soon, they would need more channels of communication, use cases, and personalization—and needed a flexible provider who could keep up. 

After considering a number of different vendors, SuperVista got in touch with Bird and immediately realized the platform was a good fit. Bird met every one of the company’s criteria and particularly impressed SuperVista with its ability to move fast. 

“We have the same mentality. One company asked us to forecast 6 months into the future. It just wasn’t an option. We move so fast, I don’t even know what we will do next week,” said Peter Wieczorek, SuperVista’s Chief Technology Officer. “I need a partner that can handle changing priorities.”

An entire platform migration in two months 

A migration project at SuperVista’s scale may seem daunting, but proper planning and involving the right people early resulted in a fast, low-risk transition.

SuperVista gained access to a dedicated technical team of solutions engineers and technical account managers with deep country-specific email expertise. They provided detailed advice on topics such as sender reputation management and deliverability and analyzed each market’s challenges to develop an audience-specific optimization strategy. Each market would get time to warm up before scaling to full capacity which helps build a good delivery reputation. 

In Peter’s words: “It was a seamless experience. We signed the contract, and two weeks later saw improvements.”

Within 36 days, Bird identified SuperVista’s problem, customized a solution, and finalized the contracting. Within 2 months, SuperVista increased their open rates by 325% and leads by up to 200%. 

Deliverability, retargeting, and transactional messaging take flight

Reliable email delivery translates into big wins  

Before Bird, SuperVista was running into deliverability challenges common to rapidly growing businesses, specifically, very high send volumes in a short time period. This creates a big problem: It’s hard to know if your email strategy is working if people aren’t receiving their messages. 

Emails stalled out instead of sliding into customers’ inboxes, and SuperVista couldn’t determine how to improve due to a lack of data visibility and analytics. The solution? Bird Email Analytics. By monitoring send metrics and analytics, SuperVista could easily identify bottlenecks and improve deliverability. The non-technical, no-code platform was proving successful. 

Email retargeting strategies garner regional brand loyalty

Email is one of the top-performing channels for SuperVista when it comes to scheduling eye test appointments. These appointments are important milestones in the customer journey. Since most customers change their glasses every two years, an effective and timely retargeting strategy is vital to increasing retention and securing recurring revenue. 

Now with Bird, email marketing is SuperVista’s most effective way to stay top-of-mind when it’s time to grab some new lenses. 

With the no-code platform, SuperVista’s marketing team doesn’t need to rely on engineers to rapidly experiment with curated email offers and content in each country. Regional holidays, birthdays, and other offer opportunities drive local affinity and brand awareness. 

SuperVista finds success after doubling down on customer-centric communication

Sending emails and text messages sounds like such a simple function for a business. But when this core capability isn’t optimized, it can drastically impair performance and stall growth. For a revolutionary company like SuperVista, a personalized, consistent communication strategy is a large percentage of their competitive advantage.

“We increased our open rates by over 325%, we’ve never received such a service from another company.”

Now SuperVista is equipped with a full suite of communication tactics including email newsletters, transactional emails, shipping confirmations, and special offers—and they can analyze data from these messages to drive customer engagement even further. 

“The key reason we chose Bird? The personal contact. Most companies offer decent service before the contract is signed, but then go quiet. With Bird, the great service continued after we signed.”

Once SuperVista integrated the Bird platform into their disruptive business model, the impact was immediate. SuperVista has seen impressive results since partnering with Bird, including increasing their email open rates by 325% and boosting their leads by 200% in 2 months.

“Working with SuperVista has proven to be a gold-standard example of how well a migration can work when everyone is on board. With help from every level of the team, we were able to move everything over in less than 2 months, and help the SuperVista team see results quickly.” - Bird

The future of SuperVista and Bird: New markets and new channels

The success of SuperVista’s partnership with Bird has set the stage for a whole new phase of progress. Now that email systems are functioning at a high level, SuperVista is aiming even higher.

With Bird’s Email Analytics, the company now has a better sense of who their customers are and what motivates them. For example, most customers are over 45 and they prefer SMS communication. 80% of customers use mobile devices to engage SuperVista. 

Armed with this information, new channels, touchpoints, and opportunities are on the table. This means that SuperVista can dig deeper by developing an intimate understanding of each stage of the customer journey. As they move forward, SuperVista is confident that Bird will remain a valuable partner in their mission to provide outstanding experiences, drive growth, and offer new ways to delight customers.

About SuperVista

SuperVista is a full digital hybrid optician operating online and through a network of over 1,300 independent opticians across Germany, Austria, Spain, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They provide a seamless, convenient, and cost-effective way for customers to get their eyes measured and buy glasses. SuperVista aims to make digitalization their top priority and reach their customers while working on building their brand. They are committed to providing quality service and ensuring that their customers enjoy the process. 

About Bird

Bird’s mission is to create a world where communicating with a business is as easy as talking with a friend. We power communication between businesses and their customers — across any channel, always with the right context, and on every corner of the planet. If you’ve ever ordered takeaway, returned a package, contacted customer service, or requested a login code, it’s almost guaranteed your interactions have been powered by Bird’s technology.

Our platform, our applications, and our APIs help businesses streamline conversations through their customers’ preferred channels — like WhatsApp, Email, SMS, Voice, WeChat, Messenger, and Instagram — and build powerful and engaging experiences. Bird's out-of-the-box functionality and omnichannel expertise tip the scales for knowledge workers and help them be productive right away, with tools to build great marketing campaigns, customer service experiences, or automated business processes.

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Bird processes over 5 trillion+ messages, calls, and emails for over 29k+ customers such as; Google, Facebook, and Uber across channels like WhatsApp, Email, SMS, and many more. Founded in 2011, we have grown to a powerhouse team of 800+ employees who represent more than 55 nationalities, and we’re proud to be a fully-remote company.