Salary / Marketers / Marketing Cloud

Marketing Cloud Salary Guide (Earn More in 2023)

By Lucy Mazalon

Marketing Cloud salaries are a hot topic. The increasing demand for Salesforce Marketing Cloud skills and the growing Salesforce economy means that these professionals find themselves in a good position, boasting some of the most in-demand expertise, and the hardest to retain skilled professionals for.

With this in mind, how much do Marketing Cloud Specialists make? Read on to find out – plus which factors influence your earning potential, and tips on how to improve it.

Jump to: Which Factors Influence Marketing Cloud Salaries?

Jump to: How to Improve Your Marketing Cloud Salary

READ MORE: What Does a Marketing Cloud Specialist Do?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Salary Averages

Note: the tables in this section contain a mix of Marketing Cloud specific roles (aligned with the Marketing Cloud certification pathway), and hybrid roles (where generalist marketers have split responsibilities between Marketing Cloud administration and other sub-disciplines).

Read the full salary survey report to find salaries for more job titles, such as Marketing Operations Specialist, Email Marketing Manager, etc.

North America

CountryRoleEntry levelSenior levelContract (p/h)
US ($)Marketing Automation Specialist$86,625$105,125-
Marketing Automation Consultant$94,750$121,125$121
Canada (C$)Marketing Cloud ConsultantC$90,000C$125,000C$132

Europe

CountryRoleEntry-levelSenior levelContract (p/d)
UK (£)Marketing Cloud Specialist£45,375£62,250£540.50
Marketing Cloud Consultant£56,125£73,125

£709.50
Ireland (€)Marketing Cloud Specialist€44,875€57,500€513.50
Marketing Cloud Consultant€56,375€71,750€676.50
Germany (€)Marketing Automation Consultant€66,500€88,750€585.50
France (€)Marketing Cloud Consultant€49,500€59,000€625
Netherlands (€)Marketing Cloud Specialist€3,750€4,700+-
Marketing Cloud Consultant€3,750€4,700+-
Belgium (€)Marketing Cloud Specialist€3,060€4000-
Marketing Cloud Consultant€3,060€4000-
Spain (€)Marketing Cloud Consultant€36,500€51,000-
Italy (€)Marketing Cloud Consultant€32,875€43,125€375
Switzerland (CHF)Marketing Automation Consultant103,375 Fr122,125 Fr-
Marketing Automation Solution Architect113,125 Fr132,500 Fr-

Asia-Pacific (APAC)

CountryRoleEntry levelSenior levelContract (p/d)
Japan (¥)Marketing Cloud Admin¥4,015,000¥4,710,000-
Marketing Cloud Consultant¥8,575,000¥13,895,000-
Marketing Cloud Architect¥7,880,000¥11,900,000-
Australia (AU$)Marketing Cloud ConsultantAU$115,500AU$132,000AU$1188.50
Marketing Cloud DeveloperAU$121,125AU$145,750AU$1242.50
Marketing Cloud ArchitectAU$150,750AU$172,750AU$1458
Singapore (S$)Marketing Cloud AdminS$69,750S$93,375-
Marketing Cloud ConsultantS$80,000S$121,875-
Marketing Cloud DeveloperS$72,000S$96,000-
Marketing Cloud Solution ArchitectS$127,250S$169,375-

Data source: the data is from the Mason Frank Career Survey, based on self-reported information from 2,500+ Salesforce professionals, spanning a range of job titles, industries, and geographic locations.

Factors That Influence Your Marketing Cloud Salary

One single salary figure can be misleading, without context. There are certain factors at play that can result in differences between one professional’s salary, to the next. We will dive into the following factors in this guide:

  • Experience (Seniority)
  • Certifications
  • Generalists vs. Specialists
  • Location

Experience (Seniority)

As with any profession, the more experience and responsibility you take on, the higher your salary expectations should be.

When it comes to Marketing Cloud, there are several roles to consider:

  • Marketing Cloud Content Creator: Design and create content in Marketing Cloud’s Studios and Builders. While using SFMC in a limited and controlled way, some will develop an interest in how they take the next step. These individuals would be entry-level, or delivering managed services for a consultancy.
  • Marketing Cloud Administrators: Take ownership of the Marketing Cloud platform internally, as an employee of a Salesforce customer organization.
  • Marketing Cloud Consultants: Implement and optimize Marketing Cloud in an effective and scalable way that is in line with their clients’ requirements.
  • Marketing Cloud Developers: Extend Marketing Cloud beyond declarative (point-and-click) configuration – including building integrations, and developing dynamic/personalized experiences utilizing HTML, CSS, and AMPscript.
  • Marketing Cloud Architects: Responsible for the “big picture” solution design with multiple integrated systems and large data volumes (advising on ETL best practices).
  • Non-Salesforce specific roles: End-users that work in Marketing Cloud everyday, but maintaining/optimizing Marketing Cloud is not their core job responsibility.
READ MORE: What do Marketing Cloud Specialists Do?

As Marketing Cloud Specialists become more experienced, they will tend to move from administrator roles, to consulting, and/or becoming a Marketing Cloud Architect.

Marketing Cloud Architect is one role that can’t be reached without real-life experience. To understand the “big picture” solution design, you need to have worked on multiple use cases (not necessarily multiple accounts, but that will make a more solid architect).

Later in the guide, we’ll discuss a different role divergence that’s happening as Marketing Cloud has shifted from a messaging product to a data platform, with individuals taking routes to become technology-focused individuals, industry/marketing strategy domain specialists, or organizational-focused individuals.

We will also contextualize this divergence in line with the ’known’ Marketing Cloud roles (admins, consultants, architects).

Certifications

Salesforce professionals love gaining certifications – they are a milestone in your career that proves that you know what you are talking about. Certifications can potentially be used as leverage if you are looking for a more senior position internally, or looking for a job in another company.

In the annual career survey, respondents were asked if they experienced an increase in their salary after earning (any) certification:

  • 63% did, reporting an average salary increase of 26%.
  • 37% did not, their salaries remained the same.

For those who work at Salesforce consulting partners, you have access to close to 40 Salesforce accreditations. If you were to look at the complete list of Salesforce accreditations, you may notice that they focus on products and features that are emerging and/or are challenging to master. In the marketing domain, these include Marketing Cloud Personalization, CDP, Marketing Cloud Advanced Cross Channel, and Marketing Cloud Intelligence.

READ MORE: Salesforce Accredited Professionals: Marketing Cloud (+ Pardot)

Those who have achieved the exams say that they’re not for the faint-hearted! These accreditations truly test your knowledge, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for you to prove your expertise in these “in-demand” Marketing Cloud niches – and stand out from the crowd.

Generalists vs. Specialists

There are multiple Marketing Cloud career pathways that follow a specialist skill set. Usually, Marketing Cloud Specialists start off by mastering Email Studio, and then verge into a specialism e.g. Personalization (Interaction Studio), Intelligence (Datorama), etc.

An organization looking for an Marketing Cloud Specialist skilled in more than one area will expect to be offered more salary, especially for a less common combination of skills! However, understanding best practices across the core Studios and Builders, data management, and business analysis, will also be attractive to organizations.

Location

Salary figures are influenced by location, due to the differences in the cost of living between countries – and within countries (the US is a good example of this economic influence).

Converting all the salaries into US$ makes the geographic comparison easier. Senior Marketing Cloud Consultants in Canada reported an average salary of around $92k. The UK consultants on average earn $87k, in Spain $53k, in Australia $89k and in Japan, the figure is $102k.

Geographic location plays an influence where demand is greater than the supply of professionals in-region. Let’s not ignore the fact that there will naturally be differences within countries, too. While the pandemic “hybrid”/”remote” working models have democratized location vs earning potential, there will naturally still be some variation.

How to Improve Your Marketing Cloud Salary

If you want to increase your salary, this section is for you. Here are some tips for anyone looking to accelerate through this career path.

Tip 1: Get Familiar With CDP

Salesforce Genie, declared the greatest Salesforce innovation in the company’s history, ingests and stores real-time data streams at massive scale, and combines it with Salesforce data. This paves the way for highly personalized customer experiences, delivered in real-time.

Salesforce CDP unifies versions of the same individual across applications, delivering customer experiences based on data sources beyond Salesforce.

READ MORE: What is Salesforce CDP? Salesforce Genie vs Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform

As a Salesforce Marketer, understanding how CDPs work (data ingestion, unification, transformation and activation) is currently a big plus, but in the future we think it will be a necessity.

Salesforce Customer Data Platform. There’s no substitute for learning on the job. It’s a steep learning curve that will involve some trial-and-error but definitely worth it in the longer term.”

Timo Kovala, Lead Marketing Consultant at Biit.

“I’m not seeing that certification or experience in Salesforce Genie (formerly CDP) impacts remuneration, but I anticipate that this will change in the next 18-24 months.”

Eliot Harper, Marketing Cloud Architect.

Tip 2: Understand Data in the Cookieless Future

On that note, let’s address the cookieless future and the demise of third-party cookies. We’ve all heard that it’s coming, but have we taken a realistic look at how this will affect data collection, and then downstream impacts on segmentation and personalization?

Alternative data capture strategies may be required, such as incentivization and authenticated web experiences.

Navigating regulations means you will be valuable as a “go-to” person in the team who can demystify compliance, and give everyone peace of mind.

Tip 3: Conversion Rate Optimization

Pumping money into gaining traffic to your website is futile if these prospects don’t convert. A drop of 7.13% suggests hesitancy to spend money among consumers, and becoming more spend adverse (source: Neilpatel.com).

One way marketers can help weather the economic downturn is to monitor conversion rate and build new ways to capture consumer interest. One area could be personalization; however, as we know from ‘Understand Data in the Cookieless Future’ (point #2), we’re “walking the ‘personalization vs. privacy’ tightrope” as we adapt to changes in privacy regulations and calls for data transparency.

Tip 4: Grasp Analytics

Another way you can be indispensable to your organization is to bring data to life in visualizations. What’s lying hidden among all the data organizations are capturing and processing?

You don’t need to be a data scientist – in fact, Salesforce has made plenty of moves to make analytics accessible to learn. If we take Marketing Cloud Intelligence (Datorama) as an example, multiple new capabilities have been added in 2022, and will continue to grow in 2023 to favor non-data scientists.

Tip 5: Consider Your Organization’s Objectives

At Salesforce Live London, PwC, including their CMO, presented their research highlighting that marketing is perceived as a cost center (rather than the growth and value generator we know it to be). Takeaways from the presentation included:

  • There are still too few CMOs.
  • Marketing functions need to expand beyond marketing objectives to business objectives.

“The reason I’ve highlighted this is because salary growth will come to the people who can position how they are realizing that vision. Either how to solve business challenges with their expertise, who to apply technology, or marketing strategy, to realize the higher-level goals.”

Kerry Townsend, Principal Consultant at AmberStar Consulting, Marketing Cloud expert.

On the agency/consultancy side, you’ll find organizations coming in to the Marketing Cloud space from two angles:

  • Creative agencies, needing to offer technology services, e.g. Marketing Cloud.
  • Technology consultancies, needing to offer marketing strategy and creative skills, i.e. to improve Marketing Cloud adoption.

If you are working for these companies, and if you have the interest to learn the parallel skills that complement your current responsibilities, or have the flair for them, then you could become a valuable asset.

“I see that professional services organizations encounter, and work in delivering, Marketing Cloud from two angles (outlined above). This gives individuals routes into Marketing Cloud that can be deliberate or “accidental”; they can then nurture the skill sets they are strongest at.”

Kerry Townsend, Principal Consultant at AmberStar Consulting, Marketing Cloud expert.
READ MORE: Agency vs. In-House: Which Salesforce Marketing Role Fits Best?

Tip 6: From Messaging to Data Architecture

Marketing Cloud is not ‘just’ an email/SMS/etc. marketing tool:

“There has been a significant shift from a focus on messaging, to a data product, which has resulted in the demand for different skill sets. The skill sets required to use messaging products on a day-to-day basis are not the same as those required to implement and optimize data products. This could lead to role and personal development switches.”

Kerry Townsend, Principal Consultant at AmberStar Consulting, Marketing Cloud expert.

Therefore, there’s a role divergence happening, with individuals taking one of the following routes:

  • Technology-focused individuals who understand ingestion, unification and transformation.
  • The industry/marketing strategy domain specialists that will come up with the use cases to unlock the technology’s value. The technology will succeed or fail based on how attuned the domain specialists are with their audience.
  • Organizational-focused individuals, who understand what good alignment looks like, and leverage that to deliver use cases. They will be the ones that command the larger salaries.
Technology:Content Creator → Marketing Cloud Product (Studio) Specialist → Marketing Cloud Administrator → Marketing Cloud Solution Architect. Architects will seek to become knowledgeable in other complimentary enterprise tools, reaching either Salesforce B2C Architect, or MarTech Stack Architect (not Salesforce specific).
Strategist:Content Creator → Marketing Cloud Product (Studio) Specialist → Marketing Cloud Administrator → Solution Strategist. Architects will seek to become knowledgeable in other complimentary enterprise tools, reaching MarTech Stack Architect (not Salesforce specific). Further to that, Marketing Director → CMO.

“The premise of the strategist path (above) is that they have developed the knowledge and understanding of how to leverage the tools and the data to deliver the business value.”

Kerry Townsend, Principal Consultant at AmberStar Consulting, Marketing Cloud expert.

This point pulls together the previous tips (CDP, first-party data tactics, conversion rate optimization, analytics, organizational objectives) and is an ideal summary. To begin “spreading your wings” across the organization, we’ll finish up with additional examples:

  • Industries: Across the Salesforce platform, industries are becoming a hot topic. The data models differ between industry cloud products and Salesforce standard (Sales Cloud). Keeping data structured properly, and in sync, for use in Marketing Cloud is an important responsibility. Beyond that, marketing application and strategy, with a focus on generating value for the organization, raises the conversation beyond the marketing domain.
  • Commerce: While mastering Commerce Cloud is a specialization in its own right, you’ll hear of some Marketing Cloud Specialists who have started becoming familiar with commerce. Commerce Cloud is positioned as part of the “Digital 360” (i.e. Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud). This is especially true for individuals who are pursuing the B2B and B2C Architect paths (hence exploring other complementary technologies for the technical path).
  • Web3: Although too early to say how quickly NFT Cloud will be adopted in the Salesforce customer base, those who like to work with “cutting edge” technologies will find NFTs, and Web3 generally, interesting.
READ MORE: 10 Salesforce Marketing Trends for 2023

The Author

Lucy Mazalon

Lucy is the Operations Director at Salesforce Ben. She is a 10x certified Marketing Champion and founder of The DRIP.

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