Credit Card Solicitations: Less for More.

• Position: Brief Article

Credit card issuers were trying harder than ever to attract new customers last year, but with less success.

About 992 million card solicitations were mailed during the second quarter of 2000, but the nationwide response rate dropped to 0.4 percent, a new low, according to Mail Monitor, a national direct-mail credit card tracking service. The response rate for the two preceding quarters had been 0.7 percent.

Nearly 80 percent of all the households in the United States received at least one credit-card solicitation during the quarter, the highest number the service has measured since it began tracking such solicitations in 1988. Robert Skolnick, executive vice president of BAIGlobal Inc., the marketing research firm that manages Mail Monitor...