January 2nd, when it falls on a weekday, is the worst day of the year to send email on. From business perspective, it’s the first day of the calendar year so everyone is back and probably from more than just a few days off, some even two weeks off. From the technical side, this is also the first day of the year that IT admins come back to work, doing the tasks they do to keep the systems working, usually catching up on a few days of missed maintenance tasks.

Every year the SPAM problem gets worse. On January 2nd not only are you going to be fighting maintenance intervals that didn’t take place but also people coming back from work and catching up to days of piled up emails, where catching up means sending out even more mail. Most email servers out there are overloaded with just the SPAM problem alone, compounding a few days of email correspondence on top of it will make today the least likely day for your email message to be delivered and read.

So if you have a newsletter, a really important note, a critical deadline to meet or an important contact that you absolutely have to reach… email is not your friend on January 2nd.

Of note, ExchangeDefender is currently performing at 43% capacity (10 AM EST, -5:00 GMT)