Marketers

Marketing Cloud Administrator: New Salesforce Certification Alert!

By Lucy Mazalon

An exciting new certification, Marketing Cloud Administrator, has been announced, which offers Salesforce Marketing professionals another notch on the belt. The new credential joins the other existing Marketing Cloud certifications: Marketing Cloud Email Specialist, Marketing Cloud Consultant, Marketing Cloud Developer – to now form a multi-level set of credentials to cater to a range of professional personas.

Figures from the latest Mason Frank Salary Survey (the largest survey of its kind in the Salesforce industry) show a promising outlook for salaries in Marketing Cloud specialised roles, when compared to hybrid roles where certifications are typically not pre-requisites. Here’s an in-depth guide on how Salesforce Certifications can accelerate your career.

Who are Marketing Cloud Admins? Who Should Get Certified?

There are some defining characteristics of Marketing Cloud Administrators. The suggested experience and knowledge to take this certification exam includes:

  • Thoroughly navigates Setup – this makes up the bulk of the questions (38%)
  • Business Units: configure business unit structure, permissions, and security
  • Troubleshoot account configuration
  • User requests: granting access, assigns Marketing Cloud roles to users
  • Monitoring the account: auditing, notifications,
  • Data extraction and report generation
  • Configure Marketing Cloud builders and studios.
  • Subscriber data: familiar with data structure and management
  • Evaluate data quality
  • Knowledge of Marketing Cloud extension products and features (Datorama, Interaction Studio, Audience Builder, etc.)
    Knowledge of Marketing Cloud integration offerings (FTP, API, MC Connect)
  • Configure Marketing Cloud utilizing industry and product best practices.

As we know, ‘best practice’ is subjective requiring hands-on experience to learn the quirks, and so cannot be learned from a textbook. That’s why certifications demonstrate system prowess – in order to pass, you have to demonstrate you really do know your stuff.

You won’t be expected to know programmatic languages or SQL/Developer tasks.

How Can You Get Certified?

The certification exam is 60 multiple-choice questions, where you will have 105 minutes to achieve a pass mark of 67%. There’s self-study material on Trailhead: Administer Marketing Cloud. Maybe give this trail a go first! There are other instructor-led courses available, which you can find detailed in the exam guide.

If this sounds like a good fit for what you do day-to-day, then the first step is to visit the overview page to schedule your exam!

 

The Author

Lucy Mazalon

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

Comments:

    Nish
    March 21, 2020 1:37 am
    How long do u think it would take to prepare for the Marketing Cloud Admin cert? I have no experience in Marketing Cloud but am a Salesforce admin for Sales Cloud since 2017 .
    Lucy Mazalon
    April 20, 2020 1:00 pm
    Hi Nish, Salesforce recommends you have 3-6 Months experience with Marketing Cloud. From my experience, Marketing Cloud has a lot of new concepts to learn, including a new data model. However, I don't have this certification, so I cannot say for certain if you could pass it with a shorter study period. Good luck!
    Nish
    July 27, 2020 12:48 am
    Thanks Lucy. Do you know if there are any study groups that you know of ?
    Lucy Mazalon
    September 08, 2020 6:34 pm
    Hi Nish, you could check to see if you have a local Marketing Cloud user group where you can ask if anyone would like to join you in studying - or ask the same on any SFMC Trailblazer group. I know that SFMC admin is also included on the Salesforce certification days, which may be of interest: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/credentials/cert-days Good luck!
    Syed Gul E Abbas Alamdar
    April 20, 2021 3:44 pm
    Hello, As i am BI data analyst with education background in business administration and strategy & Consulting and want to further kick start my career into the path of salesforce ecosystem. Thus i want to ask that after careful considerations and research and guidance from salesforce people i have been advised to get Salesforce Admin certification first. But i have one confusion that if i get Salesforce Admin certification then later on do i need to also take the Marketing cloud Admin certification as well? As not sure both are the same or different certifications while further developing and shaping up the salesforce career path?
    Christine Marshall
    April 21, 2021 2:03 pm
    Salesforce Certified Administrator and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Administrator are two different exams/certifications. Admin Exam Guide: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/help?article=Salesforce-Certified-Administrator-Exam-Guide Marketing Cloud Admin Exam Guide: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/credentials/marketingcloudadministrator

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