Credit-Card Solicitations: Doing Less with More.

The credit-card market keeps getting tougher. Mail Monitor, a direct-mail tracking service, reports that credit-card solicitations last year reached an all-time high of 3.5 billion pieces while consumer response rates dropped to an all-time low of 0.6 percent. "In fact, the fourth quarter of 2000 was the largest three months of mail volume we've ever seen in Mail Monitor's history, with over 1 billion solicitations sent to U.S. consumers during that period alone," says Andrew Davidson, vice president of competitive tracking services for the marketing research firm BAIGlobal Inc., which operates Mail Monitor.

Reasons for this phenomenon? Davidson says high "mailbox clutter" makes it hard for consumers to tell one credit card offer from another. Then, too, credit cards are everywhere. Three-fourths of all U.S. households already have one credit card, and the average is 2.4. It's going to take an exceptionally compelling offer to break through the congestion.