CHICAGO — Market research firm Synovate says that consumers will receive slightly less direct mail offers from credit card issuers in 2007 than they did in 2006.

In its most recent Mail Monitor, a service which tracks credit card direct mail advertising, the full year projection shows a slight decrease from the 5.76 billion offers received in 2006, which was also down from the all time high of 6.05 billion card offers received in 2005. As a result of the decreased volume for 2007, Synovate predicts response rates will edge up slightly to 0.6% from 0.5%, representing some 32 million applications for new credit cards.

“Trends in credit card direct mail volume tend to be cyclical,” said Andrew Davidson, vice president of competitive tracking services for Synovate's U.S. Financial Services Group. “Every few years we see a dip in volume driven either by industry consolidation or economic pressures,” he said, referring to previous volume dips in 1999, 2002 to 2003 and 2006.