The marketing cloud email specialist exam was my first Salesforce test I have taken. Yes, surprisingly how long I have been working with Salesforce, I have yet to get my admin yet, or my developer yet I have been working in Salesforce for several years now. I have always been more on the UI side or the marketing side. Working with Pardot, developing email campaigns, designing Aura and Lightning Web Components. But this year since joining Cap Gemini I had to go all in and get certified. Here are a few of the tools and the places I used to study the content for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist test.

Trailhead:

Of course, you got to start with trailhead, this is the starting point for everything Salesforce. It is a great first step.  Now I already had a good grasp on how Marketing Cloud worked. When you have already sent out emails out of it or been doing email marketing for several years, it does stick cause Pardot, Mailchimp, and a few other systems will closely overlap in certain ways. Trailhead has a great Trailmix that you can easily get go through over 16 hours to understand what being an Email Specialist is all about. So do not skip this, this is like the best starting point.

Udemy:

Going through Udemy I used one of the few marketing courses to study, what was nice about using Udemy is that the teacher actually takes you through everything cause currently Marketing Cloud doesn’t have a dev environment like Service Cloud and Sales Cloud does. So being able to see everything in action helps.

Quizlet:

Quizlet is probably the unsung hero of how I studied for the Email Specialist test. I took the tests I had purchased on Udemy and added some more study material from Trailhead and put them into my own Quizlet cards. I know a lot of people use flash cards but the idea of making them and if you have seen my own handwriting…I will describe it in one word…” Yikes.” So, I turned to this app.

I would often be studying the sets of flash cards when I had a spare moment. From within a webinar, or when I am chilling in bed, to even the in between matches in call of duty, or the down time in Apex Legends. I would be constantly studying, and I would not just be focusing on remembering what question went to what answer but why it went with that answer. If you have been working with Salesforce, you know there are a lot of Do’s and Don’ts within certain situations with the many different tools Salesforce provides.

OneNote:

My go to note taking app, I do not know where I would be without it. What I love about one note is that you can pull into just about anything and everything from the web and copy it into it. Is there a diagram on Trailhead you need? Copy and Paste. Do you need to add notes to the picture? Done and does it sync between everything? YUP. Now you don’t need to use OneNote if you have another favorite go with that, but taking notes on important key points from definitions to the who, what, where and why is a important key factor in understanding what you are studying.

What Key Things Should You Focus On:

I am not sure if I am able to share my individual scores, but my weaker areas of the test were Subscriber Data and Management, and Email Message Design. My strongest areas were about Tracking and Reporting, and Marketing Automation. Some key things you should know about is Lists Vs Data Extensions vs Groups. Subscriber Lists and Groups. You should also know what systems use Lists and what systems use Data Extensions and when they should be used on what type of email you are sending out.

Another thing that every Email Marketing person should know is about the Email Delivery Standards, know the difference between Sender vs Delivery profile. Know what can trip up CAN SPAM rules and the in’s and out of building an email, from using a template to pasting in HTML. The many different type of Email Sends is also a must know, such as what is the difference between a User-Initiated Email vs a Transactional Email.

In Conclusion:

Studying is one of those things that you must do in repetition and when you feel that your ready you should go for the test. I practiced my cards daily and tried to just it very fresh in my memory. That old saying “if you don’t use it you lose it.” That is absolutely true cause if you take a long enough pause you could forget it later on down the line.