In order to make use of the functionality mentioned in this article, you must have access to the app’s API key and your personal key. For more information, see Where do I find my API key and personal key? A good understanding of how to send events is also required. For more information about the Swrve Events API, see Swrve Events API.

For technical information about user acquisition tracking in Swrve, see User acquisition tracking guide. For information about the User Acquisition report, which enables you to track the results of user acquisition campaigns, see User Acquisition report.

All API calls to <app_id>.api.swrve.com (or <app_id>.eu-api.swrve.com for EU-configured apps) are authenticated using the API key provided for the app.

Tracking referral source

The following sections describe how to track the referral source using a tracking link.

Encode referral source in landing page URL

When your user acquisition team creates a landing page URL for your web app, they must add the following two parameters to the URL:

• swrve.provider – the name of the ad provider. Examples: Facebook, Nanigans.
• swrve.campaign – the name of the ad campaign being run. Examples: HappyNewYear, US_Females_25_30

For example, if your landing page URL is usually https://apps.facebook.com/my_app_name, add these two parameters to it:

https://apps.facebook.com/my_app_name?swrve.provider=Facebook&swrve.campaign=HappyNewYear

Swrve currently supports only two hierarchical levels: provider and campaign. If you have feedback on how you’d like to see Swrve organize your referrers, please send your feedback to support@swrve.com or contact your CSM.

Decode referral source and send to Swrve

You must decode these parameters from the URL and combine them into a single string with a ‘.’ in between. For example:

swrve.provider + '.' + swrve.campaign = Facebook.HappyNewYear

Then send these combined parameters to Swrve in the swrve.referrer_id attribute of a User API call. For more information about User API calls, see Swrve Events API. Send this message once after the user installs your app. For example:

https://<app_id>.api.swrve.com/1/user?api_key=<api_key>&user=<user_id>&swrve.referrer_id=Facebook.HappyNewYear

https://<app_id>.eu-api.swrve.com/1/user?api_key=<api_key>&user=<user_id>&swrve.referrer_id=Facebook.HappyNewYear

Sending referrer updates

You supply referrer updates to Swrve by sending a user event with a swrve.referrer_id parameter for a user of interest.

Useful user event parameters

Example

Update or set the referrer of a user without affecting DAU and MAU. In this example, it costs $1.50 to acquire the user:

curl -G -d "api_key=<api_key>" -d "user=<user_id>" 
-d "swrve.referrer_id=my_advertising_partner" 
-d "swrve.referrer_cost=150" -d "user_initiated=false" 
https://<app_id>.api.swrve.com/1/user

curl -G -d "api_key=<api_key>" -d "user=<user_id>" 
-d "swrve.referrer_id=my_advertising_partner" 
-d "swrve.referrer_cost=150" -d "user_initiated=false" 
https://<app_id>.eu-api.swrve.com/1/user

Error codes

If an error occurs while processing the request, you may receive one or more of the following error codes and need to make sure your integration is equipped to handle error conditions.

Referrer export

This API call has been deprecated and any attempt to use the URL https://dashboard.swrve.com/api/1/exporter/referrer/ will return an error message. If you want to view or export user acquisition data, see User Acquisition report.