The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist credential is developed for candidates who want to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and experience on using Marketing Cloud Email application to create solutions, build marketing campaigns, data management, content creation, email marketing best practices and analytics.

There are 5 areas of knowledge that are covered by the  Marketing Cloud Email Specialist certification.

Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Topic Weighting Chart

The following are the core topic areas of the Marketing Cloud Email Specialist and what you’re expected to know:

This topic includes the following objectives:

Creating relevant and engaging customer emails is the most important task for an email marketing specialist. By implementing best practices for email design, the success of the email marketing campaigns can be positively influenced.

Before emails can be sent from a Marketing Cloud account, the sending setup needs to be defined. This includes the Send Classification as well as the authentication of the sender. The configuration of these settings can have a direct impact on Sender Reputation.
In this section, the sending setup will be described, as well as best practices to improve email deliverability.

For email marketing, the most important best practice is sending emails exclusively to subscribers who have opted in to receive emails from the company. Ignoring these circumstances can have major—even legal— consequences. This chapter explains how to acquire best email opt-ins and how the Marketing Cloud helps in honoring opt-outs.

This topic includes the following objectives:

This section explores the tools for preparing email messages for sending from Marketing Cloud. Email Templates provide a structure for the email message that can be filled out with content uploaded to Content Builder and a set of created Content Blocks.  Email Messages are emails ready for sending and can be created with HTML code, Existing Emails, Email Templates, or Text Only versions. Each Email Message must be tested before it goes out of Marketing Cloud. Users have several email testing tools available in Marketing Cloud, including Subscriber Preview, Test Sends, Litmus, Content Detective, and Validation.

This section covers the ways email messages are created in Marketing Cloud. It explains how content used within email campaigns is uploaded to Content Builder.

 
Various Content Types including images, video, and code can be uploaded either with drag-and-drop functionality or by browsing for the content on the user's computer. Users can create a range of basic and advanced Content Blocks in Content Builder and include them inside predefined Layouts. Content Blocks and Layouts can be created as standalone pieces of content either used once or added across different Email Templates. Email Messages are built with the use of Templates, HTML code, Existing Emails, or with the Text Only option.

This section examines the ways email messages are prepared to be sent out of Marketing Cloud Email Studio.

Send Flow is a step-by-step visual interface enabling send configuration to schedule and perform one-off email sends. In the Send Flow, users must define Send Classification which consists of three elements: Sender Profile, Delivery Profile, and CAN-SPAM Classification. 

Sender Profile controls all sender-related information for email sends including From Name, From Email Address, and Reply Mail Management settings. Delivery Profile determines how the message is deployed from the Marketing Cloud account. CAN-SPAM Classification specifies whether the email is Commercial or Transactional.

This section delves into the various methods on how content can be organized in the Marketing Cloud account to efficiently create email message campaigns. Marketing Cloud account can be divided into separate Business Units following the company's organizational structure to manage content and data access in the account.

Uploaded files, created Content Blocks, Email Templates, and Email Messages can be shared between Business Units to standardize the content across geographies, business, or product lines. Calendar available in the Marketing Cloud dashboard offers an overview of message activities sent from the platform.Content organization can be achieved through the use of Folder Structure, Naming conventions, and Tags within the Content Builder.

This topic includes the following objectives:

Marketing Automation automates repetitive marketing processes. It gives marketers time to focus on content rather than on manual tasks. Marketing Cloud includes three automation tools: Automation Studio, Journey Builder, and Triggered Emails/API.
If used effectively, the right messages are sent to the subscribers at the right time. This results in a higher conversion rate and brand loyalty.

Automation Studio automates recurring activities like extract, transform, and load data. It is used for advanced segmentation, runs SQL-queries, and refreshes audiences. Additionally, it can be used to send high-volume messages (more than two million per hour).

Journey Builder is an intuitive marketing tool that allows interacting with subscribers on a one-to-one basis. Journey Builder can be used for multichannel communication and it is goal driven. Journey Builder leverages data from any source, including Sales, Service, and Experience Clouds. It allows engaging with Contacts based on behavior and insights.

This topic includes the following objectives:

This section explains the differences between Subscribers and Contacts, identifies their use in Email Studio and Contact Builder, and introduces the identification units of Marketing Cloud. Unique identifiers are used in the All Subscribers List and All Contacts List to manage customer records stored in the account.

Two data storage methods are available, and the considerations related to the setup of the recommended option, Data Extensions, are described in detail. Send Relationship defined during Data Extensions creation impacts what happens when an email message goes out to subscribers.

This section explores ways of importing data to Marketing Cloud. It identifies different methods of adding data to the platform, both manual and automated, and identifies the use cases and necessary configuration steps for each of them.

Manual Record creation available in Contact Builder covers scenarios when adding test users is required for internal testing purposes. Imports into Data Extension allow Marketing Cloud users to select files from their computer or from the Enhanced FTP and feed that data into target Data Extensions. Import types including Add Only, Add and Update, Update Only, and Overwrite control what happens with the data during imports.

To perform data import on a recurring basis, Import File Activity can be configured to run on schedule or on file drop and be a part of the Automation Studio workflow. Through Marketing Cloud Connect, a connector between Sales or Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud, data between the platforms can be integrated and stored in Marketing Cloud Synchronized Data Extensions.

API Integration integrates Marketing Cloud account with websites or third-party applications to synchronize data between systems in real time and support triggered marketing communication. Smart Capture forms created and styled in Marketing Cloud can capture leads and store them in Data Extension and be a starting point for customer journeys in Journey Builder.

This section covers ways of segmenting data in Marketing Cloud. It explains the use cases for each of the presented methods.
Random Data Extensions are available in Email Studio to help create targets of randomized testing. Email Studio’s Filtered Data Extensions allow Marketing Cloud users to apply simple or complex logic criteria to base segmentation on a set of predefined conditions. Data Filters can act as standalone or reusable filters applied to Data Extensions when only one source Data Extension must be segmented. SQL Queries provide the most advanced segmentation capabilities and enable the joining of information from multiple Data Extensions.

Segmented data can be refreshed manually or automatically by using Filter Activity in Automation Studio.

This section examines ways of subscriber preference management available in Marketing Cloud. Marketing Cloud offers out-of-the-box and custom preference management capabilities. All email sends performed from the platform are uniquely identified by the system-assigned JobID number. JobID allows users to troubleshoot email sending errors. Users can utilize the Tracking Tab of Email Studio, Send Logging, or Tracking Extracts to analyze detailed information about each email send instance. Subscribers can unsubscribe from communication in Marketing Cloud using List-Level, Universal, or Global unsubscribes. Subscribers can have one of four statuses available on the All Subscribers List: Active, Bounced, Held, or Unsubscribed.

This topic includes the following objectives:

It is absolutely crucial for today's marketing professionals to understand their customers.  With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, we can send the right message at the right time to the right audience. In order to identify what to send, who to send it to, and when to send it, we'll have to rely on marketing analytics. Marketing Cloud offers a wide variety of metrics in the form of Email Tracking and Reports.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud captures a wide variety of email tracking and performance metrics.The majority of marketing professionals are heavily data-driven, and they constantly track the performance of their email campaigns in order to determine how to adjust their future campaigns. In this section, it goes one step deeper to show how to use these metrics to analyze the performance of email campaigns.

Marketing Cloud Analytics Builder allows users the ability to build scheduled and ad-hoc reports. Users can automate the report-sending process and increase efficiencies by utilizing the Report Schedules functionality.

This section will go over the various ways to create and configure both ad-hoc and scheduled reports.

This section covers Einstein features available in Marketing Cloud. Einstein features aim to segment subscribers based on their engagement with past email communication, improve content creation process, and orchestrate sends to evaluate optimal times and frequency of email sends.

Einstein features including Einstein Send Time Optimization, Einstein Scoring Splits, and Einstein Frequency Splits can be added to Journey Builder to improve journeys performance with AI-supported flow activities.