The explosive growth in mobile web enabled devices is creating a completely new email and social media marketing archetype. In just four years more than two thirds of all consumers on Earth will be reachable by these online promotional avenues!

Each Email Address Becomes More Important

According to a study by Radicati Group, wireless email users currently top half a billion and will reach nearly 1.2 billion by 2015. As more mobile web enabled device users come online, the research shows that paradoxically the number of email accounts each user has will actually drop. Since personal computer numbers are expected to hold fairly steady, there are 3.1 billion email accounts today for an average of 5.8 accounts per user while by 2015, the total number of email accounts will increase by one billion while the users increase by half a billion: resulting in a precipitous drop to 3.4 accounts per user. This statistic turns out to be good news for email marketers as by extrapolating the figures we find that while each email address now captures 17.2% of a user’s attention, in four years that percentage of time will have increased to 29.4%. This rationalization of email accounts makes each address more important to marketers… 58.5% more important in just four years!

Spam Will Not Increase

It seems that spam will not show any rise whatsoever in the next four years, even though the number of email addresses and even the total amount of email received will increase. Spam landing in corporate email accounts is set to hold steady at around 13 emails per day right through 2015 while the total average number of emails received zooms from 72 currently to 84 in four years. Email will continue to dominate corporate communications with the number of emails sent burgeoning from 33 per day today to 41 in 2015, and roughly similar numbers on the consumer side.

Half of Humanity Will Be on Social Media

Social networking is set to continue its march across the consciousness of our world with the 2.4 billion currently existing accounts reaching nearly four billion in 2015. With the intensive personal verification steps being taken by the primary social networks Facebook and Google+, to ensure that duplicate accounts are snuffed out, these figures translate to approximately half of all humanity engaging in social media in just four years from now.

Savvy email and social media marketers realize that these statistics and projections not only indicate that the prospect for expanding markets will continue to grow in the next four years, but that a truly momentous level of interconnection and interaction is being achieved that is completely novel in human history. We have already seen in the Arab Spring and in other popular uprisings how mobile web enabled devices can become central to mobilizing millions of people, and this lesson is not lost on experienced email and social media marketers who are realizing the need to engineer a new paradigm of brand communications.

Are You Prepared?

It is statistically inaccurate to state that half of the world’s population will be online and reachable via email and social media marketing due to the fact that there will still be cross-platform duplication, but the best estimates call for up to 2.5 billion or nearly 36% of all people being accessible through these vectors in just four years: More than a third of all humanity, and more than two thirds of all consumers on the planet! It is certainly a heady time to be an online marketer as the future looks brighter than ever!