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All of those email offers promising shipping in time for Christmas made for the worst deliverability of email marketing pitches the week before the holiday, reports Pivotal Veracity. As marketers crammed inboxes with last minute pitches, ISP spam filters blocked a daily average of 11.26 percent of messages during the week of December 13th.

According to the company, marketers sent more email to customers this holiday season than ever before, but deliverability became increasingly difficult as the holiday approached.

“The best days for deliverability were earlier in the month and on weekends—save for the last weekend before Christmas, which saw abnormally high email volume relative to most weekends,” observed Deirdre Baird, president and CEO of Pivotal Veracity.

The company also noted that:

•            Instances of blocking grew each week during the first three weeks leading up to Christmas.

•            The worst day to send email during the month was December 17th, when 13.8 percent of email was blocked and just 78.8 percent of email was routed to recipient inboxes (with the remaining 7.5 percent found in spam or junk folders).

•            Blocking began to subside when most retailers could no longer fulfill before-Christmas shipping: 12.2 percent of email was blocked on December 22nd— by the next day, the number dropped precipitously to just 6.4 percent.

•            Blocks spiked again during the final days of 2009 as retailers pushed year-end clearance offers and post-holiday sales. December 28th – 30th saw blocking rates of 11.8 percent, 13.3 percent and 11.5 percent.