How Holland America Line streamlined a 150-year-old email program

Holland America Line partnered with Scalero to power 15+ promotional emails per week, build 15+ new automations, and accelerate the migration from Responsys to Iterable — without slowing the cadence that fills cabins.

Holland America Line is a 150-year-old cruise line that delivers unforgettable cruise vacations through excellence, service, and genuine connections. With a passionate guest base and a constant calendar of promotions, voyages, and lifecycle moments, the in-house email team needed a partner who could move at their pace.

The CRM Targeting & Analytics team had two parallel priorities. First, the day-to-day: producing 15+ promotional marketing emails per week with creative execution, QA, scheduling, and Simon Data segmentation. Second, the strategic: building and rebuilding complex lifecycle programs while migrating their entire trigger architecture from Responsys to Iterable.

Scalero stepped in as a true extension of the team. Together, we took ownership of weekly promotional production and audience segmentation in Simon Data, while in parallel mapping, rebuilding, and testing automations as part of the Iterable migration. New triggered campaigns were designed around real customer behavior, and existing automations were tuned through A/B testing, content updates, and logic refinements.

Results?

• 15+ promotional emails per week fully managed by Scalero, freeing ~24–30 hours of internal team capacity per week to focus on strategy and cross-channel planning

• 15+ email automations created or enhanced across lifecycle, behavioral, and transactional triggers

• Responsys → Iterable migration accelerated, reducing internal workload and de-risking the timeline

• Streamlined list building and segmentation in Simon Data, improving targeting precision

Freeing up 24–30 hours per week with reliable production and a faster migration.