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As part of an effort to head off increasing calls for do-not-mail legislation, DMA president John Greco yesterday called on all direct marketers to begin putting opt-out notices in all their mailings.

"The choice of consumers to modify the amount of mail they receive or to say that they don't want to receive any mail from a marketer has long been recognized in our guidelines," said Greco in his opening keynote to a cavernous room packed with direct marketers from around the world

"The key change we are making is that we will now make this long-standing option readily available to the consumer and easy to activate," Greco added, calling the initiative the DMA's "Commitment to Consumer Choice."

As is usually the case in any DMA president's fall conference keynote, the theme throughout Greco's talk was: Self regulate or the government will step in and do it for you.

Greco called on marketers to use the DMA's mail preference service name-removal file, which will now be updated monthly instead of quarterly. "When consumers respond, their choices should be honored promptly," he said.

The announcements came at the end of a wide-ranging speech in which Greco outlined the benefits of direct marketing to businesses and the economy along with "a perfect storm" of threats the industry faces.

Sales driven by direct marketing make up more than 10% of the U.S. gross domestic product, he said. Also, more than 50% of all ad dollars go to direct marketing, he added.

Moreover, direct marketing returns $11.69 for every dollar spent compared to $5.24 for every dollar spent on general advertising, he said.

"These numbers are impressive, but what I really want you to recognize is that our direct marketing community has real clout," said Greco.

He then outlined the threats marketers face, pointing out, for example, that this year 152 data security measures were introduced in 38 states. He added that there were 82 bills introduced dealing with social networking in 27 states, and 28 spyware bills introduced in 13 states.

He added that 18 different do-not-mail bills were introduced in 15 states this year, compared to just three in 2005.

"The reason why no bills passed this year is because we were more prepared than our opponents," he said.

"Don't think for a moment that what we are up against from outside forces will be business as usual," he said. "Today we face an almost perfect storm of environmentalists, privacy advocates and other activist groups challenging our system of self-regulation."

The speech was peppered with video and personal appearances by politicians, including a welcome from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, and remarks from federal officials, including IL Rep. Danny Davis, Sens. John Ensign, (R. NV) and Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Deborah Platt-Majoras.