How to become a certified Salesforce Marketing Cloud Consultant

This certification offers the broadest technical and strategic perspective on Marketing Cloud and requires prior certification as a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist.

At Digital Response we believe that the team should always be growing and training. The industry is evolving rapidly and many of the guides that we used to use last year are probably obsolete. In this process of updating, one of the most important milestones in the email marketing area has been the technology evolution from email sending platforms to complex automated marketing systems. A few years ago, our job was to execute more or less massive campaigns for our different clients, working on the design, target definition and supervision of the sending and results. In this first phase, we worked with a field-based personalisation that can now be even rudimentary. Platforms have evolved to allow us to treat users individually, not only according to demographic data, but also linked to their activity and engagement with brands.

In this scenario, advanced platforms emerge such as Responsys y Eloqua Oracle or Pardot y Marketing Cloud of Salesforce. Today we will talk about the latter, and I will tell you about my experience acquiring one of the most sought-after certifications in our sector: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Consultant. This type of certification requires prior training (which you can do on your own or with specialised providers) and the exam, which costs 200$, which can be taken in person at Salesforce partner centres or online, fulfilling a series of requirements. To apply for your exam in either format, you must open an account at Webassesorwhere you will find the partner centres and all the requirements to take the exam online. In order to achieve this certification, we need to pass a first step: the

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist.

In this first certification we are going to get to know in depth Email Studioone of the main Marketing Cloud tools, which will allow us to send mailings, process segmentations, review results, integrate with some external services... in short, the basic aspects of any mailing platform, with a plus of potential that Salesforce gives us and that we will know how to exploit to the maximum once we reach the rank of Consultant.

After passing this first exam, we will be able to access the certification of

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Consultant

It is considered by many as the most difficult exam to pass for the certifications of this platform, and at the same time, it is one of the most demanded, since the knowledge it provides us with allows us to have a broad and deep perspective of the possibilities offered by this technology. In addition, is not only about technical knowledge, but also addresses, to a large extent, strategic and best practice issues.

The exam consists of 60 multi-choice questions which must be answered in 105 minutes. To pass the exam you must obtain a score of 68% of correct answers. The topics covered in this exam include and their weighting in the examination are as follows.

Some of them refer to technical issues of the platform (Journey Builder, Contact Builder, Account Configuration...) and others, as we have said, have much more to do with strategic aspects or conceptualisation of the account structure, depending on the type of data we have and the treatment we are going to give them.

Personally, what I find most complex about this exam are the questions on strategic issues, as the answers are closed and in many cases arguably debatable. This, coupled with the fact that Salesforce doesn't give you the "official" right answers makes it quite difficult to find the correct solution to some questions. In many cases there are open discussions on the web about questions found in the exam where some users give their arguments about different answers chosen (and sometimes all contributions are perfectly valid). Even after the exam you don't know which questions you have failed, as you only receive the percentage of correct answers in each area. Perhaps this is why so many people talk about the difficulty of passing this exam.

What is very certain is that the experience with the platform and the solving different situations with real customers helps you to solve many of the questions you may have.. It is possible to pass the exam without having used the technology in depth, but it is much more difficult. In fact, I chose to spend a few months working on a project with Salesforce Marketing Cloud before taking this second exam, which has helped me a lot. Salesforce even states that the certification is aimed at professionals who have worked with Marketing Cloud for at least 6 months. In short, the certification is the basis for getting to know the most important aspects of the platform in depth, but experience with it is vital for getting the most out of the technology. Likewise, if you have experience but not certification, it is easy to fall short in implementing solutions.. In this case, you have not had the opportunity to get an overview of all the possibilities offered by Marketing Cloud and its integration with third parties or with Service and Sales Cloud, as well as the first-hand indications offered by Salesforce for different types of implementations.

If you are thinking about applying for your Marketing Cloud Consultant certification my advice on how to approach this review would be these:

• If you have never used Salesforce Marketing Cloud use Trailhead to acquire basic knowledge and to progress little by little.
• Undertakes training ad hoc. There are a number of training providers that make it much easier for you to get certified. It is possible to do it on your own, but it will take a lot more research and dedication.
• Search for exam questions online, it will help you a lot to know what kind of questions are asked and the answers from different users. But take it as a guide and never rely 100% on answers provided by users or online services. The debate is on!
• Read the notes contributed by different users on the net. My favourite (and I think that of almost everyone who submitted) is Atilla Wohllebe.
• If possible, introduce yourself when you have a few months of experience with the platform. If you don't have the opportunity to have a wide access to the tool that allows you to test with the different builders, try to find videos with experiences, tutorials...

In our case, we thought that certification in Marketing Cloud (as well as Eloqua, Responsys...) was a basic step to face the future of the email sector. Having been able to carry it out in parallel to the actual implementation of different solutions with clients has allowed us to have a broad perspective and to grow much faster in the use of the tool.

Following this certification and the experience we have gained in recent months, in the near future, our mission will be to squeeze the potential of Marketing Cloud and guide the client in the processing of data and the implementation of automations and flows that allow them to make their email strategy much more efficient and profitable.

Ale Castellano
Lead Email Developer
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Consultant & Email Specialist