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Ask HN: How to find the email distribution list that promoted my site recently?

35 points by s-xyz ↗ HN
I recently saw a huge spike in the traffic on my website based on Google Analytics. When I look at the source, it only says that the main contributor is email, making me assume that someone shared a link to my website in an email distribution list. I would like to find out which list this is, such that I can learn from it and target similar lists given the great conversation rate.

25 comments

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pettycashstash2
It would be helpful if you provided the resource location…
pc86
They were probably trying to avoid people viewing this as a round-about way to just get their name in front of more people. I can understand the impulse.
Arrezz
Reminds me a lot of an old Desktop widget I had that would tell me if I would need a jacket or not. There is something appealing about simple applications like these!
s-xyz
Thank you and totally agree. I think of it every time I open Google.com, practically it just does one simple thing (search input box), but there is so much behind it.
amelius
This is what I would like on a smartwatch.
mooreds
I run into this problem too. Some email lists publish archives on the web, so googling might find them.

Others do not, and there's no way I can think of, especially in retrospect, to discover them.

The same is true, in my experience, with FB and LinkedIn groups.

truted2
I’ve searched for my domain on Facebook and LinkedIn and if the group or profiles are public it found the links (mobile LinkedIn search is limited so you need to use the Desktop version)
colinwilyb
Why not drop a temporary popup or form on your page? "How did you learn about Umbrellatoday? [ info box]"
truted2
Anecdotally I tried this once and not one of the 50,000 users that visited replied.
iforgotpassword
The trick is to communicate that you genuinely want to interact with the user. None of those atrocious, disrespectful popups that show up 10 seconds after I click on a search result going "hey wanna subscribe to our newsletter?" - "NO ffs, I was searching for a solution to a tech problem but now at least I know your site is complete garbage and I can stop reading"

Be honest, put the text directly below the main content, make it unobtrusive and start with something along the lines of "hey, I'm the guy running this site, and I wonder why sometimes I get a lot of visitors ..."

With that, if you get any reply, it's probably the most honest one too.

amelius
This would make me close the page.
5cott0
I am experiencing something similar on the App Store. Apple’s almost completely useless App Store Connect analytics report a significant percentage or occasional spike of unit downloads via web or app referrer with no way to dig into what site or app is linking to the app. I don’t want to add any external analytics for privacy protection though and google isn’t much help anymore.
truted2
Similar experience with Instagram. With Facebook I can at least use the search to an extent (if page is public) but Instagram story links have no traceability.
DarrenDev
Have you done a search for your app on Twitter, ordered by newness? Quite often you'll find a reference to an email list alongside your app in someone's twitter posts.
tootie
It's likely not possible. The best backdoor I can think of is that if the email list uses any standard email marketing tools there should be a persistent web hosted version of the newsletter somewhere that you can search for.
bombcar
Go to your logs and look for ulm tags in URLs and redirects. From that you may be able to work backwards to at least the provider (Hubspot, etc). You might even see refers from the web-based version of the email.
gamerDude
If you had a lot of conversions, why not reach out to some of the people that converted? Talk to them about a range of things to make your product better, one of which would be how they found you.
gnicholas
Do you have an email signup on your site? When we get an influx of interest, I’ll often ping a few new customers to ask where they heard about us.
thelandofrandom
Hey - David from The Land of Random newsletter here. I shared it on Feb 7. I'm glad to hear you got a bunch of traffic from it! It was the second highest clicked link.
s-xyz
Hi David, that is amazing to hear! Thank you so much for sharing!