Ambassadors

The Ambassadors screen, headed Ambassadors and subtitled One personal code per ambassador, the same on every event you open it on, is where you run a referral programme from your own community. 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.
2. Fill in Name. It appears on the registration form your ambassadors open.
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 beside it.
5. Optionally set a Minimum order.
6. Decide whether to turn on Review new ambassadors and Show the ranking to ambassadors. Both are explained below.
7. Click Save.

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.

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.

You reopen this form later with the Programme button in the header. 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.
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.
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. Revoke closes a link on the spot and never touches the ambassadors it 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, optionally, an email. 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 optional. When it is given, the person is added 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 on their row, as long as it has not been opened on an event yet. 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 table lists everyone in the programme, with their code, their phone number, their status, how many events their code is open on, and what they have sold.

Generate the missing codes appears when someone has no code, which only happens if the automatic creation failed. The search field matches names, codes, phone numbers and emails.

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. 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.

Where the rest lives