Why not allow people to d/l the report straight away. You immediately lose ppl once you request an email address.

Being a marketer you should realise this.

The only reason to ask for a email is to build a mailing list, which you state you don't do. So then why request an email address?

Thanks for the comment.

There are numerous reasons why we've requested an email address:

1. We're testing what sort of impact this has on the number of downloads.

We know that if people can download the report immediately (like most of the free stuff on the site) then they will. If they have to provide an email address it discourages people somewhat.

We're trying to establish if receiving an email is more personal for the recipient - and if that correlates to increased enquiry.

I figure if we don't try different things we:

a) won't know what different impacts they can have, and
b) won't stumble on a fantastic new way or reason for trying something different.

"Just because everyone else does it" isn't a great reason to stick with something.

Even though we may well turn people off requesting the report, we'll be gathering further intelligence about what makes people do things. And that's what we want.

2. We are not building a mailing list with the emails provided. The report is sent via an autoresponder (I check what email addresses requested the report, but that's it).

That has some advantages in that we can see the domains the requests are coming from (i.e. if it is resort managers requesting the report), we can see the time of day the requests are made very simply and there seems to be a heightened perception of value in a report that is emailed.

And all of those things are very useful for us.

It would be crazy of us to use these emails in any way, shape or form. We put a lot of work into providing a web site that is useful and valuable for our visitors, and we have built a fantastic following of terrific people - to ruin that by sending unwanted emails would be rather silly.

We requested the emails for the above reasons. Nothing too sinister going on here!

Just trying to think differently.

Thanks again for the input.

Great response, Brendon. I haven't yet learned to be that tactful with my comments. The other day I askimet 'spammed' a flash developer's rant on my wordpress site. I really wish I hadn't. It would have made an excellent post. Additionally, it was free original content!