One year has passed since Salesforce announced the accredited professional program. These credentials are designed to prove your extensive knowledge in a specific area of the Salesforce platform, and are exclusively available for Salesforce partners.
There are 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.
Luckily, there’s multiple Marketing Cloud (and auxiliary) accreditations to gain. Competition between consultancies can be heated when trying to win projects – stand out from the crowd, both for yourself and your consultancy, and prove you know your specialization.
Salesforce Accredited Professional vs Certification
- Accredited Professional exams: Available to Salesforce Partners (you need access to the Partner Learning Camp). These demonstrate skills with specific features, from Sales Cloud Einstein to Process Automation. The exams consist of a varying amount of questions, and time is allocated based on the number of questions.
- Salesforce certifications (‘Trailhead’ Exams): Available for everyone. These demonstrate breadth in a subject matter (e.g. Pardot Consultant), or Salesforce role (e.g. Business Analyst).
Salesforce Accreditation Examples
To give you a glimpse into what is involved with gaining a Salesforce accreditation, Tom has written about his experiences studying and passing the following accreditations (and more!):
- Test Your Knowledge: Reporting & Analytics in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot).
- Test Your Knowledge: Business Units Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot).
The key takeaway is that although the accreditations are exclusive for Salesforce partners, there’s a benefit for everyone to take learnings from those who have studied for, and achieved, the accreditations (hence the “test your knowledge” theme we have running on The DRIP).
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Credentials
- Account Engagement: Reporting & Analytics
- Account Engagement: Business Units
- Marketing Cloud Personalization (formerly Interaction Studio)
- Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform
- Marketing Cloud Advanced Cross Channel
- Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly Datorama)
- Loyalty Management
- Salesforce CMS (related): Account Engagement (Pardot)’s Lightning builders for email and landing pages rely on Salesforce CMS to host assets.