I often go to various herbal websites and wish some information. Could be I want to include them in The Herbal Green Pages Online, could be that I’m interested in more information about an event they’re having so that I can post it in the Calendar. And they have a form. No email address. (And this is true for non-herbal sites as well.) And I get off the site in disgust shaking my head. Yes, I know you get spam. I’ve had a website since early 1996 and we get spam. But I delete it. I don’t even have to open it and I can tell it’s spam by the subject line, lack of one, or email address. But I’d never think of removing my email address and changing to a form. I don’t care how much crap I get. Seth Godin’s blog today talked about this and I answered “AMEN” loudly.
Get rid of the forms guys and if it was the site designer’s idea, get rid of them as well. They know little about marketing.