Recently, I have been looking into how to embed WordPress forms into emails to be sent out to Groups but without much success. In particular, I wanted to use a Gravity Form so that there would be entries recorded in the WordPress forms area which could be exported into a spreadsheet for easy tracking and analysis.

Then I took a step back and concluded that this is a bad idea. Even when I see a link included an email, security warning lights flash before my eyes. Usually the link name is displayed and not the actual link showing that SSL is used. Including a form or any executable in an email makes me even more hesitant to use it. Too many times well meaning friends send me fixes for a virus that lead to installing the virus. I have become much less trusting of email links. Even well meaning people make mistakes.

Links in eMails from a trusted source should be as transparent as possible. Just show the URL so the reader can see the website and the use of SSL. Before the link you can easily describe what the link is for and why the reader should use it, you don’t need to give it a name and hide the URL from plain site.

Gravity Forms has an extension for embedding forms into MailChimp emails. I suppose such emails would be considered a trusted source since you would have subscribed to the list of recipients.