By Brandon Van Galder
Welcome to my journey of how I passed the Email Specialist certification in 6 weeks WITHOUT ACCESS TO MARKETING CLOUD!
Over the past year or so I have been hearing how hot Salesforce Marketing Cloud (MC) is as a product.
In all honesty, this didn’t strike a chord with me because I thought that marketers were scummy people trying to get you to buy things you didn’t need.
As I learned more about Salesforce Marketing Cloud and marketing in general, I realized this is not the case.
In reality marketers are trying to have the right conversations with the right customer at the right time and that is where Salesforce Marketing Cloud shines.
My initial introduction to Marketing Cloud was through a 4 part webinar series put on by the Talent Stacker program featuring Kaelan Moss, aka the MinuteAdmin at minuteadmin.com.
In the four part series Kaelan talked about Marketing Cloud at a high level and how every email campaign followed the same 7 steps and if you learned those steps and the tools to accomplish those steps you could successfully land a Marketing Cloud role.
Early in the webinars he spoke about his 3-Day challenge, which I signed up for immediately.
Later in the webinars he mentioned his Marketing Cloud Career Development program.
At this point in my Salesforce journey, I had one certification and lined up a role as a Salesforce Administrator.
I proceed to DO NOTHING AND SIT ON THE COURSE FOR 1 YEAR!
Yeah I know, probably not the best decision but it worked out in the end.
In Mid-April 2022 I decided to finally use the course…. while on vacation.
In all honesty, my fiancé was busy helping with a friend’s wedding at the time and I didn’t want to do anything too fun without her so I binged watched most of the first 7 days of the course in 4 days and completed a few modules on Salesforce Trailhead as well.
Kaelan introduces the topics and the ‘Minute Admin Resorts’ business case to demonstrate the topics in a real-world scenario.
He also includes links to Trailhead content and official Salesforce help documentation for each topic he is covering.
When I got back home from vacation, I was able to proceed to the practice exams he provides in the course.
These practice exams alone would be well worth the price of his program.
There are straight-up definition quizzes, section-level exams, and full practice exams.
The way I study best is to handwrite flashcards for all the key vocabulary provided.
I reviewed a specific topic and the related definitions a few times and then took a section-level exam.
I repeated this for each topic until I completed all 6 section level exams and the 4 Definition quizzes with 90% scores or higher.
When I started taking the full practice exams I would take the exam and review my incorrect answers by diving deep into the right and wrong answers to the question. (Thanks Andrew for this tip, see links to his articles below).
I progressed through the 6 practice exams scoring higher and higher each time using this method.
I knew I was ready for the exam at his point.
I signed up for the Salesforce Certification Days session on Preparing for your Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Certification and I am glad I did.
The instructor mentioned the exam topics were changed overnight.
It wasn’t a big deal but the weighting of the topics changed slightly.
The change prompted me to take the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Certification Practice Test.
It only cost $20 but I had a $40 off code which worked and was able to take the practice exam for free.
(If you have any google skills you can find $40 off discount codes and get the practice exam for free too).
On June 1, 2022, a mere 6 weeks after starting Kaelan's Marketing Cloud Career Development Program I successfully passed the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist exam!
Helpful Links & Resources
Connect with Brandon on LinkedIn
Brandon's Story on YouTube
Salesforce Certified Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Exam Guide
Prepare for Your Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Credential
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