Motivation behind this
Today 9th January 2022, I have passed Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer certification. Recently I have cleared Marketing Cloud Admin as well. As there are few concepts are common both for Developer and Admin which helps to expedite the preparation. Sharing my tips to prepare and pass this certification.
Exam Outline
Content: 60 multiple-choice / multiple-select questions (plus 5 unscored questions)
Time allotted to complete the exam: 105 minutes
Passing score: 63%
Registration fee: USD 200 plus applicable taxes as required per local law
Delivery options: Proctored exam delivered in an online proctored environment
References: No hard-copy or online materials may be referenced during the exam
Topics
Topics | Weighting |
Data Modeling | 14% |
Programmatic Languages | 35% |
API | 22% |
Data Management | 22% |
Security | 7% |
Preparation
Dedicated 3 weeks focus study from Partner Learning Camp is good for preparation.
Also, blog written by Zuzzana Jarczynska has good collection Preparing for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer certification
Few Important points to cover for exam
Data Modeling
- Types of Data Extensions - Standard, Filtered, Custom
- Non-sendable vs Sendable Data Extension and how records are added to Sendable DE
- Contact Builder Features, use of Attribute Groups
- From Contact Model - difference and usefulness of Contact Id, Contact Key and Subscriber Key
- Data Retention Policies
- Best practices of deleting 2 Million Contact Data
- Steps of Deletion - Deletion process initiated, followed by Suppression Period, Final Deletion
- Deletion using REST APIs using Contact ID, Contact Key or List
- AMPScript
- Given a snippet of code to display the outcome
- AMPScript Processing in this order: HTML Body -> Text Body -> Subject Line
- How to use a variable and attributes
- Lookup. LookupRows functions
- CONVERT and CASE
- Math function specially DateAdd, DateDiff, Divide, Mod, Now(), RedirectTo, RaiseError, BeginImpressionRegion, EndImpressionRegion
- SSJS
- We can use Arrays and advanced error handling through SSJS over AMPScript
- How to use AMPScript and SSJS together: Variable.GetValue("@myAmpVariable")
- Platform Object support, along with Core and when to use what
- Error Handling with try-catch block
- GTL
- When to use it and advantages over SSJS
- Exclusion Scripts
- ROWCOUNT(LOOKUPROWS("Suppression", "Email Address",emailaddr))> 0;
- Domain(emailaddr) != "mycompany.com"
- Scenarios of using SOAP and REST API, their capabilities, limitations and when to use what
- Use of Client Id, Client Secret and Authorization information as Header
- GET and POST syntax for REST APIs
- Transactional Messaging
- Few important methods of SOAP: Configure, Execute, Extract, Create, Update, Delete
- Few objects of SOAP: AccountUser, DataExtension, DataExtensionObject, Subscriber
- When to process synchronously and asynchronously like TriggeredSends, queued calls
- REST timeouts
- Error Handling and how to solve errors.
- Accessing Journey Builder, Content Builder, Event Notification Service from REST
- Marketing Cloud SDK and where to find help
- File Import Considerations
- FTP & File Drop Automation File Naming Pattern: %%BASEFILENAME_FROM_TRIGGER%%
- Processing of encrypted files
- Send Log and Data Retention Policies, less than 10 custom fields considerations, Contact Delete implications
- SQL
- Syntax of SELECT queries with different types of JOIN
- Selecting All fields
- Comparing with WHERE clause in performance optimized way
- Data Views: Bounce, Open, Click
- SQL Best practices: Staging the data, Consider when data is > 1M
- Encryption Methods: Asymmetric, Symmetric, Salt, Initiation Vector
- Transparent Data Encryption
- Tokenized Sending
- Using SSL Certificate
There are around 20 sample questions can be found from fast path course at PartnerLearningCamp which are very effective.
Happy Learning!
