Credit Card Issuers Reduce Direct Mail Offers

Good news for people who are annoyed to receive junk mail! Unsolicited credit card offers may soon have a smaller presence in U.S. mailboxes. Due to the today's economic uncertainty and lower response rates, the financial service companies have reduced direct mailing. According to the researches, the volume of unsolicited credit card offers fell nearly 14% in the first quarter of 2008 in comparison with the same period last year. Credit companies are creating more efficient marketing strategies than direct mail.

The effectiveness of unsolicited credit card offers seems to have waned. Since the early 1990s, the volume of direct mailing to American households reached 6 billion offers per year. However, only three out of every 1,000 offers generated responses in 2005. It is a significant decline from about 28 per 1,000 in 1992. Bank of America acknowledged that direct mail generated 23% of its credit card sales in the second quarter of 2006, down from 30% in the same period a year earlier.

Lower response rates caused credit card issuers to re-evaluate their marketing strategies and move away from direct mail offers. Lenders want to be sure that every marketing dollar they spend is as efficient as possible. Trying to increase the effectiveness of their advertisements and make costs lower, they have turned their attention to new ways of attracting customers. Instead of direct mailing they offer to apply for credit cards via websites or bank branches.

This tactics has cut down the volume of direct mail: it fell by about 12.7% in the first quarter of 2008. Among financial services companies, credit card issuers reduced direct mailing the most. Unsolicited credit card offers dropped nearly 14% in the first quarter to approximately 2.6 million mailings. Loan and mortgage companies reduced their direct mail offers by 6%.

One of the dominant credit card mailers, JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut down its volume of direct mail the most. Its unsolicited credit card offers dropped 34% during the first quarter of 2008. HSBC, a London-based credit company, followed this example with a 23.3% reduction. Bank of America cut its direct mail offers by 17.5%.

The most obvious reason of reducing direct-mail credit card offers is the costs of mailing. However, there are other factors that have an influence as well. Some U.S. households receive hundreds of credit card offers each year, so they just don't pay attention to one more application in their mailbox. Many consumers already carry multiple credit cards, so they don't need new offers.

Despite the drop, the number of direct mail from financial service companies remains staggering. The consumers received about 4.2 billion pieces of direct mail in the first quarter of 2008. Don't expect that unsolicited offers will fully go away in the nearest future. It's still considered to be a very effective means to get customers to react. That effectiveness doesn't seem to disappear anytime soon.

Contrary to the common tendency, American Express and Discover Financial Services slightly increased their volumes of unsolicited offers. However, the credit card companies become more sophisticated in their targeting techniques. American Express has turned to nontraditional ways to push its credit cards. They advertise their plastics at such places as at nightclubs or restaurants frequented by young, urban professionals. With mailed credit card offers going down, response rates to solicitations have substantially risen.