I wonder how many of the users that complete the form mistake it for a newsletter subscribe, as that's commonly where subscribe widgets live.
Yeah, great point, I think this might be the case. I'd been thinking perhaps a chat widget or link to a slack channel or something might be more useful, and clear in its purpose.
Relevant for you: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/stop-asking-me-to-sign-up/
People have been leaving their emails, but surprisingly, even though the intent is very clear (I think), almost nobody has actually replied when I've emailed to open the conversation. The kinds of response rate percentages (<<10%) talked about in the article very much resonate!
My opening email is nothing like as long as the first one in this article, but it does contain a generic intro paragraph (thanks for leaving your email, I'm the founder, etc) which I include just for context and politeness, but which I've realised from reading this article may be causing people to just stop reading, thinking that it's an auto-generated response. I'll try some one liners from now on and see how it works out!