What is a Conversion?

A conversion is Siren’s record that a collaborator influenced a customer action worth rewarding. That action might be a purchase, a subscription renewal, or a lead signup, depending on how the program is configured. Sale conversions are available in all tiers. Lead and renewal conversions require Siren Essentials.

Every conversion ties one collaborator to one triggering event inside one program. A single customer action can create several conversions at once if multiple programs match, which is how the same purchase can reward an affiliate and a royalty-earning author at the same time.

How a conversion gets created

Engagement A customer interacts with a collaborator's tracked touchpoint

Action The customer later completes a purchase or signup

Conversion Siren creates a conversion for each collaborator who wins credit

Conversion statuses

Every conversion carries one of three statuses. A pending conversion is waiting for review before it can generate an obligation. An approved conversion has been validated and counts toward what the collaborator is owed. A rejected conversion has been deemed invalid, either manually or automatically (for example, when a refund comes through), and will not generate a payout.

You can configure programs to auto-approve conversions or to hold them in pending until you review them. Holding in pending is useful when you want a buffer to catch fraud or refunds before they turn into obligations.

Conversions versus transactions

A conversion records the credit. A transaction records the money. The two are linked but distinct.

When a customer buys a book through an affiliate link and that same book pays a royalty to its author, one transaction is created for the purchase and two conversions are created against it, one for the affiliate and one for the author. Each conversion drives its own obligation under its own program, but they both draw their financial details from the same underlying transaction.

Transactions carry the itemized breakdown (products, discounts, shipping, tax, fees), and conversions use that breakdown to calculate the reward. If a program excludes tax and shipping from its commission base, the conversion applies those rules against the transaction it’s linked to.

Manual conversions

When a sale happens outside your normal tracking (a phone order, an in-person sale, or a case where tracking failed), you can create a conversion by hand. See Manually Attribute a Transaction for the workflow.

For developers: This concept maps to the ConversionsAwarded event. See the events reference for the full pipeline.