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NEW EVIDENCE THAT e-mail marketing is maturing can be seen in the success of cruise line Royal Caribbean International's recent online video campaign. It probably would've been a bandwidth-guzzling flop not more than a year ago.

The e-mailing asked some 2 million recipients to click through to www.royalcaribbean-explorer.com, where they were greeted with a choice of five 90-second “Web shows” that featured some aspect of cruising. At the end of each show they were invited to view another, or to move on to a Web site where they could buy travel packages.

The average viewing time was 4.25 minutes. Interactivity reportedly was 50% higher than previous Royal Caribbean efforts.

“We know the load is not so large that people are bailing,” said Tony Quin, co-founder and CEO of Atlanta ad agency IQ Interactive, which created the campaign. “Our whole game is to give people as much as we can within the constrictions of technology.”

IQ Interactive relies on what it calls “directed choice” and “incremental engagement” to drive brand immersion and response, Quin said.

“The theory behind directed choice is that people do not want a lot of choice,” he said. “They want limited choices and they want you to direct their experience, because — especially in a marketing environment — people don't want to be left to their own devices. They want you to tell them what's important, and it's up to you to make sure all roads lead to Rome.”

Not too long ago, Royal Caribbean's content would've risked being seen as unnecessarily self-indulgent at the expense of a large portion of the target audience. But now consumers apparently have the bandwidth, processing speed and the desire to view content-heavy pitches.

The number of active broadband users in homes rose 28%, from 74.3 million in February 2005 to 95.5 million this past February, according to Internet audience information service Nielsen//NetRatings. At the same time, broadband penetration among active home Internet users hit 68%.

Also, according to a recent survey by the Online Publishers Association, 24% of Internet users access video at least once a week, while 46% watch it a minimum of once a month.

While news is the most popular form of online video, 66% of viewers say they've watched online video ads, and 44% of those have taken action on what they've seen.

Viewers generally will give a video site no more than five to seven-and-a-half minutes, Quin said. “But that's great. If we can get somebody for five minutes, that's a major brand-engagement experience.”

Royal Caribbean's campaign seems to break one direct marketing tenet: If you give recipients a choice, they'll do nothing. However, Quin said, this is where directed choice comes in.

“At the end of each story the [voice-over] comes on and tells you to pick another story, then asks you to click one of the links. Those links are very important because that's where the money happens,” Quin said. “You'd be surprised at how many people are enamored of the idea that the Internet is all about choice.”

But if the marketer offers unlimited choices, he continued, “you're burdening consumers with work and analysis, and they don't want to do it.”

As for incremental engagement, Quin said: “We're not so arrogant as to assume that anybody would spend more than 10 to 20 seconds with us at any particular time. It's our obligation to be engaging in little bites…and each bite gets a little more relevant.”

He pointed out that along with the rapidly increasing speed of home Internet connections, better computer processors have helped make campaigns possible that would have unthinkable even a year ago.

“This all happened within the last year. We were fighting download times like crazy a year and a half ago,” Quin said. “You can have the biggest pipes in the world, but if you've got a slow processor it can't crunch that much information.”