What will replace email?
I sometimes get asked, is email dead or what will replace email: The answer for me is easy; I believe that more email will replace email. Yes, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Whatsapp, etc., allow us to communicate more efficiently within our organization and make our teams less reliant on email.
IMO this, in return, makes email more valuable; it helps us remove the clutter from our inboxes. It allows email to shine:
- as the digital backup of our most important communications
- an important method of business communication that is fast and cheap
- let’s just not spam; email marketing done right, can genuinely be 1:1 communication
- As our preferred method of communication during the pandemic
- https://www.emarketer.com/chart/235552/us-adults-preferred-channels-brands-advertise-communicate-during-coronavirus-outbreak-march-2020-of-respondents
Current landscape and future growth of email:
- Today, there are over 4.0 billion email users worldwide, and this figure is expected to grow to over 4.3 billion by year-end 2024.
- Revenues for all segments of the Email Market combined are expected to total over $46.8 billion in 2020 and will grow to over $84.2 billion by year-end 2024, an average annual growth rate of 16%. This revenue growth is driven mainly by the migration of on-premises mailboxes to cloud mailboxes (if you need some help in this regard, email the ShuttleCloud team :p ).
- Total worldwide email traffic, including both Business and Consumer emails, is estimated to be over 306 billion emails/day as of year-end 2020, growing to over 361 billion emails/day by the end of 2024.
To quote an old adage, quality over quantity is what I believe we will see in the years to come. I wonder if the future of email is following the trend in Europe, where more and more people seem to be shifting to their national email providers: https://blog.shuttlecloud.com/europe-email-providers-germany-france-netherlands-poland-italy/