Credit card marketers sent out a record 1.4 billion direct mail offers during the first quarter, up 11% over last year, according to Synovate.
The mailings coincided with increasing promotions of bankcards with issuer proprietary reward and rebate programs, which made up 27% of all bankcard mailings in the quarter, up from 16% last year.
With the record high mail volumes, the response rates to credit card offers reached a record low of 0.4 percent.
“As the mailbox of U.S. Households become more cluttered with credit card offers the response rate continues to drop,” said Brian Stratford, vice president of competitive tracking services in a statement. “As the competition to cut through the clutter continues the consumers will be able to choose from a wide range of reward and rebate programs at very attractive prices.”
In addition, the first quarter was the first time more offers were mailed for bankcard proprietary reward and rebate programs than either co-branded reward programs or non-bank card programs such as American Express and Discover, according to the report.
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