Ambassadors

The Ambassadors screen, headed Ambassadors, is where you run a referral programme from your own community: one personal code per ambassador, the same on every event you open it on. You post one link, each person fills a short form once, and each of them gets a code with their name in it, like MELANPAU for Melanie Paulus. That code never changes. What changes is the discount it carries, which you choose event by event.

Open the screen

1. Open Manage, then click your promoter page.
2. Click Ambassadors in the sidebar, under Marketing.

View ambassadors opens the screen; without it the sidebar row is greyed out rather than hidden. Manage ambassadors is what draws the buttons: with viewing alone the programme, the links and the list are all readable and nothing can be changed. The row also needs a paid plan, and is greyed with a sparkle when the page is on the free tier.

The screen belongs to the promoter page, not to an event. That is the whole point: one ambassador, one code, however many events you run.

Create the programme

Before the programme exists the screen reads No ambassador programme yet, with a Create the programme button.

1. Click Create the programme. A panel opens on the right, in four parts: The programme, Default discount, Registration and Codes and ranking.
2. Fill in Name. It appears on the registration form your ambassadors open. The panel will not save without one, and says so under the field.
3. Optionally write a Description. It appears on that same form, under the name.
4. Pick a Default discount: Percentage or Fixed amount, and enter the value in Discount (%) or Discount (€).
5. Optionally set a Minimum order.
6. Set the switches: Review new ambassadors, Ask for an Instagram handle and Let people sign up from your own website under Registration, then Open new codes on running events and Show the ranking to ambassadors under Codes and ranking. All five are explained below.
7. Click Create the programme at the bottom of the panel.

Minimum order refuses the code under a certain basket size, on every event it reaches. It is a floor per order, not per ticket: four tickets at €8 make a €32 basket and pass a €30 minimum. Leave it at 0 for no minimum.

Review new ambassadors holds every new registration as Pending. Their code is created straight away but stays switched off until you approve them. Leave it off and everyone who fills the form is active immediately.

Show the ranking to ambassadors puts a leaderboard on the page your ambassadors open. It shows a first name and the initial of the surname, never a phone number and never an email. It is off unless you turn it on. Ranking a community against itself is a decision about that community, and it is yours to make rather than one a default makes for you.

Let people sign up from your own website opens the programme to a site of your own built on a Sway boilerplate, so people join there instead of on a Sway page. It does nothing on its own — it also needs a website invite, which is what counts those sign-ups. See Run it from your own website.

Open new codes on running events decides what happens to someone who joins after you have already opened your codes somewhere. With it on, their code starts working immediately on every current and future event you have opened, at the discount already set there. Past events are left alone, and an event you have never opened is never opened on your behalf: the discount there is yours to choose. Turn it off and a newcomer's code does nothing until you press Sync ambassador codes again.

Ask for an Instagram handle adds one more field to the registration form. It is on, including on programmes created before the option existed: the handle is how you tag someone in a story and repost what they post, and asking once at registration is one field where asking forty people afterwards is a week. It stays optional for the ambassador, and it appears in your list next to their name, as a link straight to their profile. Turn it off and the field is gone.

You reopen this panel later with the Programme settings button in the header, where its button reads Save. One programme per promoter page.

Share an invite link

The link is what proves someone belongs to your community, because it only circulates inside it. Sway cannot read a WhatsApp group's membership, and no product can: the official API covers only groups the business itself created, and the tools that get around that would put your own number at risk. So the link does the job, and the controls below contain what happens if it is forwarded.

1. Click New link in the header. Before your first link, the dashed slot under Invite links opens the same panel.
2. Optionally fill in a Label so you recognise the wave later.
3. Optionally set Spots. This is the number of ambassadors the link may enrol.
4. Optionally set an expiry under Expires. Clear beside it removes the date.
5. Click Create the link.
6. Click Copy on the new row, and post it in your community.

Each row shows its state as a pill, Open, Full, Expired or Revoked, alongside how many of its spots are taken. Copy only appears on an open link. The ⋯ menu at the end of the row holds Edit and Revoke. Revoke asks first, because a revoked link cannot be reopened; confirm with Revoke the link. It never touches the ambassadors the link already enrolled. Create as many links as you need: a first one capped at 30, a second at 50 a season later.

Edit changes a wave after you have posted it: the label, the number of spots and the expiry. The link itself is not among them. The token is what people already have open in a group chat, so it is never regenerated, and the count of who has used it is not editable either. Lowering the spots below the number already enrolled is refused rather than accepted — that reads as a typo, and closing a wave on purpose is what Revoke is for.

What the ambassador fills in

The link opens a single card asking for a first name, a last name, a phone number and an email — all four required, marked with an asterisk — plus an Instagram handle if you asked for one, which is optional. Nothing else, and no Sway account is needed.

The phone number is what identifies them. It is stored so you can reach your own ambassadors, it is never shown publicly, and one number can register only once per programme, so filling the form twice returns the same code rather than creating a second ambassador. It is not verified: once the link proves membership, a code sent by text proves only that the number exists, which is one step too many on a form that has to convert.

The email is required, and it is what gets somebody back to their own page. The personal link is the only key to it, phones get replaced, and a code that has been in a group chat all season is not something to reissue lightly — so an ambassador who has lost their link asks for a new one by email. Without an address on file, there is nothing to ask with.

The address also adds them to your CRM contacts with the source ambassador. Their marketing status is untouched, because giving you an address so you can talk to them about the programme is not the same as subscribing to your newsletter.

They land straight on their own page, with their code on it.

How a code is built

Five letters of the first name and three of the last, in capitals, with accents folded and everything else dropped. No number.

Short names are truncated, never padded, so a short name simply yields a shorter code. When a code is already taken, the surname slice grows one letter at a time for the newcomer: a second Melanie Paulus becomes MELANPAUL. The first holder never changes, because their code may already be on a flyer.

Codes are unique across the whole of Sway, not only across your programme, so a collision can come from another organiser's coupon. Nobody can be promised that their code will be exactly their name.

You can change a code by hand with Change the code in the ⋯ menu of their row, as long as it has not been opened on an event yet. The panel checks the format (4 to 20 letters or digits) and says what is wrong under the field. After that it is fixed: it is in a group chat and possibly on a poster.

Open your codes on an event

Codes do nothing until you open them on an event. That happens on the event's own Coupons screen, not here.

1. Open the event, then Coupons in the sidebar.
2. Scroll past your own coupons to the Ambassadors section.
3. Click Sync ambassador codes.
4. Pick the discount for this event: Percentage or Fixed amount.
5. Click Open the codes.

Every active ambassador with a code is opened at once, whatever the headcount. Running it again is safe and is how you pick up the people who joined since: it opens what is missing and leaves everyone else exactly as they are. That is why the button says sync rather than generate.

The button only offers the programme of the promoter the event pays out to. A co-organiser's programme is not offered, because a code from it could never be accepted at checkout.

Change the discount on an event

You opened at 5% and meant 15%. Click Change the discount in the Ambassadors section header, set the right value, and confirm.

Nothing is retroactive: orders already placed keep the price they were sold at. The section header shows the current discount and the date it last changed, so a report spanning the change still adds up.

Manage your ambassadors

The Programme tab opens on one block that says what the programme needs next, then four figures: how many ambassadors, how many orders their codes brought, how many tickets, how much revenue. The last three are all-time totals, and each opens the Activity tab, which breaks them down by ambassador over a period.

What the programme needs next

The block shows one state at a time, the most urgent first, with the button that deals with it:

Somebody only ends up without a code if the automatic creation failed. The count of claims waiting also rides on the Credits tab itself, so it stays visible while another state is shown. With nobody in the programme yet, the block gives way to the list's own empty state, which offers Copy the invite link or New link.

The list

The table lists everyone in the programme, with their code, the number of events that code is open on (or Not open on any event), their status, what they have sold, and their standing when you run one. Past six ambassadors, a toolbar appears above it: the search field (Search a name, a code, a phone or an email), then All / Pending / Active / Suspended, which carry their own counts. A search that matches nobody offers Clear, which resets the search and the status at once. The list pages twenty-five at a time. On a phone, each ambassador is a line with their status, their code and what they sold.

The row menu

Approve sits on the row itself, because it is the one thing you do in a run. Everything else is behind the ⋯ at the end of the row: Copy the personal link, Give credits, Standing, Change the code, and Suspend or Reactivate at the bottom. Suspend says what it does right under its name, Switches the code off on every event, and does not ask twice: Reactivate in the same menu undoes it. Someone who can only view the programme still gets Standing, read-only.

Copy the personal link hands you that ambassador's own way in, the one that opens their page. There is no password and no account behind it — so send it again rather than registering them a second time, which would mint a second code and split one person's sales across two records. Treat the link like a password: whoever holds it is that ambassador. A message confirms the copy; when the browser blocks the clipboard, the message carries the link so you can copy it by hand.

What the ambassador sees

Their own page lists their code, a copy button, what they have sold, and every event where the code currently works with the discount it carries there. Beside each event is Copy my link — the event address with their code already in it, so whoever opens it lands with the discount applied and types nothing. Tell them to share that rather than the bare code: a typed code cannot be traced back to who spread it, and a link can, which is what fills the Link visits column. Before you open a single event it says so plainly rather than showing a code that silently works nowhere.

An empty list has more than one cause, and the page names the right one. Someone you have not approved yet reads Waiting for approval, not "no event yet" — one is your queue and the other is a programme that has not started, and telling them the wrong one sends them chasing the wrong person. A suspended ambassador is told their code is switched off and to get in touch with you.

They reach it from the link they got when they registered, so tell them to keep it, or from a Sway account if they registered while signed in.

Buyers simply type the code in the Promo code field on the event's ticket page, like any other coupon. The order is credited to the ambassador automatically.

See who actually worked

The Activity tab answers the question the member list cannot: who handed their code out, whether or not a sale came of it.

Two ambassadors with zero orders can be two very different people. One gave their code to fifteen friends and none of them bought that week; the other never opened the invite. In the list they are the same row. Here they are not.

Pick a period and, ideally, an event. The table keeps its two sources apart, under two headings:

• Measured on the web: Link visits (when one event is picked), Code entered (visits where somebody applied their code on your event page) and Reached checkout (of those, the ones that went on to the payment step).
• Your sales: Orders and Revenue, your own figures, exact.

On a phone, each ambassador shows the same two groups on two lines.

The pills above the table are the quickest way in: Everyone, Sold something, Used, no sale and Never used. Used, no sale is the group worth a thank-you that nothing else on Sway would ever show you.

If a refresh fails, the rows already on screen stay, under a block with Try again. If analytics returned nothing for the period, the web columns are hidden rather than shown as zero, and a block says so.

Reward them

Tick the ambassadors you want, choose how many guests each one gets, and then:

• Put on the guestlist takes you to that event's guestlist with the add drawer already open and the names already pasted in. Review it, pick the ticket type, and issue. It needs an event: pressed with All events, it points you at the Event filter instead.
• Copy for guestlist puts the same lines on your clipboard, for an event you are not filtering on or for a list you keep elsewhere.
• Create an email list gathers them into their own list in Email Marketing, so you can write them a thank-you. It prepares the audience and sends nothing by itself. Anyone who unsubscribed from you is left out.

Both are optional. A programme that never uses either keeps working exactly as it did.

Give ambassadors credits

Credits are a scoreboard you define. An ambassador earns them when a sale goes through their code, and spends them on whatever you decide to put in the reward catalogue: a free ticket, a guestlist spot, a hoodie, a drink at the bar.

They are off until you switch them on, and a programme that never does behaves exactly as it always has.

Open the Credits tab on the Ambassadors screen. Once credits are on, it opens on one block that says what needs doing (Claims waiting for you, Sales earn no credits yet, Nothing to spend credits on, Sales without credits yet, or Credits are running), then four figures: what is in circulation, how many rewards you publish, how many claims are waiting, how many sales are still to credit. Then the claims and the catalogue. The Credit settings that produce all of it sit at the bottom, because you set them once and read the rest every week.

Changing a setting brings up a bar at the bottom of the screen with Discard and Save. Nothing is saved until you press Save, and leaving the tab or the page with unsaved changes asks first.

What a sale earns

Two numbers, and they add up:

A three-ticket order at 5 per sale and 2 per ticket earns 11. The line under the fields shows the answer for a two-ticket sale while you type, because 5 + 2 × 3 is the sort of arithmetic that is obvious only once someone has done it.

A free order earns nothing. That is deliberate and not negotiable: an ambassador holding a 100%-off code could otherwise mint credits at will, and the catalogue would become a vending machine with no coin slot.

Reward the amount, not just the count

Two more fields, and both are optional. They exist because per-sale and per-ticket rates reward volume, not money: a €5 ticket bought under a 90%-off code earns exactly what a €50 full-price ticket earns.

Use either, both, or neither — a programme that sets neither behaves exactly as it did before these existed.

The two preview lines under the fields show a cheap sale and a dear one side by side. If they read the same, your rates are ignoring the amount; if they differ, that is the value rate doing its job.

The value part is always rounded down to whole credits: 0.5 per euro on a €7 order pays 3, not 3.5.

Set a minimum order

The blunter of the two, and often the one you want. A minimum is a threshold and not a sliding scale: one cent under it, the order earns nothing; on the line, it earns in full. That is far easier to explain to an ambassador than a taper.

It is the same shape as the free-order rule that is already there, and it is the cheapest way to stop a deeply discounted code from paying like a full-price sale.

Name them what you like

Singular and plural replace the word credit everywhere the ambassador reads it — point, jeton, pint, karma. Leave them empty and Sway uses its own word, translated into the ambassador's language. Your word is never translated; it is shown exactly as you typed it, the way a brand name is.

Count the sales that already happened

If your programme has been running, the sales made before you switched credits on are still there and still attributed. The block at the top then reads Sales without credits yet, and its button, Count the N sales made before this, awards them at the rates you have saved.

Press it twice and nothing happens the second time. Each order can only ever produce one credit entry, which is what makes the button safe to offer at all.

Build the reward catalogue

New reward, beside the What credits buy title, opens the panel. With no reward yet, the dashed slot in its place opens it too. What you set:

A missing name or a cost under one is named under its field. Each row's ⋯ menu holds Edit, Switch off (or Switch on) and, while the reward is live and has never gone out, Tell ambassadors. Switching a reward off hides it from the catalogue and leaves every claim already made intact.

Tell your ambassadors about it

Tell ambassadors, in the reward's ⋯ menu, emails everyone in the programme who gave an address: the reward, what it costs, their own balance, and whether it is already within reach.

Each email also carries their personal link — the ambassador page address they were given when they registered. It is the only way into their own page, there is no login to fall back on, and it is the single most common thing for them to lose. Every programme email is a chance to hand it back.

It goes out once per reward, and the menu item disappears afterwards. There is no un-send, so it asks first: the question names the reward, and Tell ambassadors in it sends the email. Press it when the reward is really ready, not while you are still editing it. A reward you created but have not announced is still perfectly usable; ambassadors simply find it on their own page.

Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe that needs no account. Someone who uses it keeps their code and their credits — it stops the emails, nothing else.

Handle the claims

The Claims list, at the top of the Credits tab, is the queue. It opens on Waiting; Handed over, Cancelled and All show the rest, and past six claims a search field finds a name, a reward or a reference. Each row names the ambassador, the reward, what they answered (or No answer, or Nothing asked when the reward asks for nothing), and when.

In that panel, Cancel the claim confirms and Keep the claim backs out. The two actions are not the same and the difference matters: cancelling undoes the claim, handing over closes it. A claim you cancel by mistake cannot be un-cancelled; the ambassador simply claims again.

Claiming checks everything at the moment of the press: the balance, the stock, the window, the per-person limit. An ambassador who is short reads exactly why the button is off rather than pressing it and being refused.

Add credits by hand

Sometimes the code is not the whole story. Someone flyered for six hours, brought the sound engineer, drove the van.

On the Programme tab, Give credits, in the ⋯ menu at the end of the row, opens a panel on that person. Enter an amount and a reason, then press Give credits. The reason is required, and it is not paperwork: the ambassador reads it on their own page, next to the credits it moved. A missing amount or reason is named under its field.

A negative number takes credits away, and a balance may go below zero — after a refund, for instance. Nothing is hidden to make the number look tidier.

The panel lists that person's recent movements underneath, so "did I already do this" has an answer before you press anything.

What a refund does

Refund an order and its credits come back off, automatically, the moment the order's status changes. You do not have to remember, and it does not matter which screen you refunded from.

If they have already spent them, the balance goes negative and stays there until they earn it back. Sway does not claw back a reward that has been handed over.

Credits on the ambassador's page

Their own page gains a balance in your words, the catalogue of what they can get, and their movement history — every sale that earned, every claim that spent, every manual entry with the reason you wrote.

A reward they cannot claim yet says why: 142 credits needed, out of stock, ends 12 September, already claimed. The button is off with the reason on it, which is worth a great deal more than one that can be pressed and refused.

Give ambassadors a standing

Points that never get spent, tiers to climb, quests to finish and badges to collect. Credits are a currency; standing is a rank, and the two are kept apart on purpose — if claiming a reward also cost you your rank, nobody would ever claim anything.

It is off until you switch it on, and it is independent of credits: run points on their own, credits on their own, both together, or neither.

Once standing is on, the tab opens on one block that says what needs doing (There is no ladder yet, Nothing earns points yet, Sales without points yet, or Standing is running), then four figures: points earned, steps to climb, badges awarded, quests finished. The rules that generate them sit at the bottom, under the same save bar as the credit settings: Discard or Save, and a question before you leave with unsaved changes.

Open the Standing tab on the Ambassadors screen, switch on Use standing on this programme, and press Save in the bar. Switching it off later hides all of it and deletes none of it: the points, the tiers reached and the badges earned are still there if you switch it back on.

Your words

Four nouns, and you can replace all of them:

Leave one empty and Sway uses its own word, translated into the ambassador's language. Yours is never translated — it is shown exactly as you typed it, the way a brand name is.

Where the points come from

Two sources. Use one, the other, or both.

Sales are the automatic one. Four fields, exactly the same shape as the credit rates, and they add up:

Copy the credit rates fills all four from your credit settings, which is the right starting point if you already run credits and want the two to move together. They are separate numbers afterwards.

Two preview lines under the fields show a cheap sale and a dear one side by side while you type. If they read the same, your rates are ignoring the amount.

All four at zero is a perfectly good setting: points then come only from quests, which is the tightest way to run this — every point is something you chose to award.

Quests are the other source, and they are covered below.

Rank the leaderboard by sets what orders the ranking your ambassadors see: Tickets sold, Revenue, or your points. It only matters once Show the ranking to ambassadors is on in the programme settings, and while it is off the setting says so underneath.

Tiers

A ladder measured in points. One tier sits at zero — that is where every new ambassador starts, and it cannot be deleted.

What they get is a promise you make and honour: priority on guestlist requests, first pick on the merch table, a drink at the bar. Sway displays it. It does not enforce it — you do.

An ambassador's tier is recomputed every time their points change, so a tier you add today applies to everyone tonight without you touching a single member.

New tier sits beside the ladder's title. Each row ends with an edit button and, except on the tier at zero, a delete button.

Deleting a tier is safe: everyone standing on it moves to the tier below, and not a single point is lost.

Quests

Something to finish. A quest completes the moment its target is met, pays out once, and never pays out twice.

What a quest can count:

And what it counts over:

A date range with a start and no end is how you say from now on — which is the usual way to launch a quest without paying it out to your veterans on day one.

Quests arrive switched off for that reason. Switch on, in a quest's ⋯ menu, asks before it pays anything: the question says how many ambassadors already qualify and what that pays out now, and Switch it on confirms. Switching a quest off does not ask, and takes nothing back.

A quest nobody has finished can be deleted; once somebody has, switch it off instead: that retires it without erasing what they did. Re-check quests sits beside New quest.

Badges

Collectibles. They confer nothing on their own, and that is the point: they are the reason a badge wall is worth looking at.

A badge is awarded by a tier, by a quest, or by you. Badges an ambassador has not earned are still shown on their wall, in silhouette — the one you can see but do not have is what makes the wall work.

Only a badge nobody holds can be deleted. To withdraw one that is already out there, switch it off. Both are in the ⋯ menu on the badge.

Start from a set rather than a blank page

Add a starter set creates five tiers, ten badges and eight quests, all of them yours to rename, re-price and delete. It is the fastest way to see the shape of the thing before deciding what you actually want. It is offered in the block at the top while there is no ladder, and beside New quest while there is no quest.

The tiers arrive switched on. The badges and quests arrive switched off, for the reason in the warning above.

Points for the sales you already made

If your programme has been running, the sales made before you switched standing on are still there and still attributed. The block at the top then reads Sales without points yet, and its button, Award past sales (N), awards them at the rates you have saved, then re-checks every quest, so a quest whose target those sales already met completes in the same pass.

Press it twice and nothing happens the second time. Each order can only ever produce one points entry.

Re-check quests does the same second half on its own, which is what you want after editing a quest's target.

Lock a reward behind a tier

A reward in the credit catalogue can require a tier. The ambassador who has not reached it sees the reward, sees the button off, and sees the name of the tier they need — Locked · Veteran — which is something to aim at. A reward they cannot see at all is not.

The gate is on the points, not on the tier itself: an ambassador standing above the gate always qualifies. Delete or renumber a tier and nobody is locked out of something they had already earned.

Adjust one ambassador by hand

Standing, in the ⋯ menu at the end of any row in the ambassador list, opens everything about that one person: their points, their tier, their badges, their finished quests and their full points history.

From there you can add or remove points with a reason (Adjust), award or take back a badge (Award), and mark a quest finished (Mark finished). The reason is required on a manual points change and it is shown to the ambassador, because Ran the stand at the festival is an answer and a silent adjustment is not.

What the ambassador sees

On their own page, above the credits: their points in your word, their tier with its colour and its perks, and a bar showing how far along the current rung they are — measured from the rung they are on, not from zero, so the last stretch of a long ladder still feels like progress.

Below that, the whole ladder including the rungs above them, their quests with a progress bar on each, their badge wall with the unearned ones in silhouette, and their points history line by line.

Run it from your own website

If you run a website built on a Sway boilerplate, the whole programme can live there instead of on a Sway page: your own domain, your own design, the same ambassadors and the same codes underneath.

Four things have to line up, and all four are yours to set.

1. Here, open Programme settings and switch on Let people sign up from your own website.
2. Here, click Website invite beside the Invite links title. It creates the single invite your site spends, one sign-up at a time. It is not a link to share — it never appears as a URL — and Edit on it is how you cap the number of sign-ups your site may take, exactly like Spots on a normal wave.
3. On the crew's API screen, tick read:ambassadors and write:ambassadors on the key your site uses, and fill in Storefront addresses with your site's address. That list is where Sway is allowed to send an ambassador back to after an email sign-in link — leave it empty and no member can ever get back into their account. See Authentication.
4. In your site's own panel, switch the ambassador portal on and write the headline and intro your visitors read.

Your site then carries three pages of its own: a join page, a sign-in page and the ambassador's own page, with their code, their sales, their credits and their standing. Signing in is by email — Sway sends a one-time link that lands back on your site, which is why the email is required at registration. Sway sends that mail, so Sway owns the address in it: it can only point at an address registered on your key.

Somebody already in the programme cannot join a second time. The form recognises the phone number, refuses, and points them at the sign-in link instead — because whoever typed a number is not necessarily whose number it is, and signing them straight in would hand a stranger the account.

An ambassador's link into your site carries their code as ?amb=THEIRCODE. The code follows the visitor from your events list to the event they pick, shows as a line naming the ambassador above the ticket form, and is turned into a discount by your own server at checkout. The address bar never carries a price, so there is nothing there for a visitor to edit.

Where the rest lives