I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the skill progression/path for someone who’s doing engineering work in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform.
This obviously doesn’t apply to everyone working in the platform, but for those of you doing this kind of work in agencies, I think it can be a helpful guide for taking the next step. Certification tests have their place for sure, but these are what I’ve found to be the practical benchmarks.
Recruiters, hiring managers: this is what people like me do in Marketing Cloud.
| Level | Category | Subcategory | Skill | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | Email Studio | AMPscript | Basic Syntax | demonstrates a working knowledge of AMPscript syntax |
| Beginner | Email Studio | AMPscript | Basic Functions | demonstrates a working knowledge of AMPscript functions, what they are and generally what they are used for |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | AMPscript | Personalization and conditionals | understands fault-tolerant methods for personalization and can build conditionals with multiple criteria |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | AMPScript | Debugging | knows how to use the process of elimination and debugging output to troubleshoot AMPscript runtime errors |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | AMPscript | Looping | can retrieve data from a data extension outside of the send/view context and iterate through and output the results |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | AMPscript | Payload parsing | can demonstrate how to parse a JSON or XML payload and output HTML in a loop |
| Advanced | Email Studio | AMPscript | API functions | is familiar with the SOAP Objects and Methods and how to interact with them using AMPscript |
| Advanced | Email Studio | AMPscript | Salesforce CRM functions | can demonstrate how to interact with SF CRM using AMPscript API functions |
| Beginner | Email Studio | SQL | Basics | understands basic SQL syntax, select statements, datatypes and where clauses |
| Beginner | Email Studio | SQL | Joins/unions | understands SQL data relationships and how to produce a single result from multiple data extensions |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | SQL | Marketing Cloud data model | is familiar with the system data views and their relationships and can build queries to retrieve and/or summarize subscriber and activity data |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | SQL | Conversions | knows how the datatypes in SFMC match to T-SQL data types and can convert between them using cast and convert functions. |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | SQL | Date math | can demonstrate how to efficiently select rows between two dates and can calculate past and future dates |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | SQL | Conditional field values | can demonstrate the use of case, coalesce, isnull, isnumeric, isdate to conditionally set column values |
| Advanced | Email Studio | SQL | Deduplicating and aggregating | knows how to deduplicate rows in a data extension and the various methods for aggregating data within the constraints of SFMC |
| Advanced | Email Studio | SQL | Optimization & Data Normalization | knows all reasons why queries can fail and can articulate how to address each one, familiar with normalized relational database models |
| Beginner | Email Studio | HTML | Basics | understands the basic anatomy of an HTML document (DOM), also containers, links and other email related elements, can manually re-indent code |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | HTML | Containers | can build a table with multiple columns and rows and understands inline vs block-level elements |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | Email HTML | Platform targeting | familiar with how to target code for specific email platforms |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | CSS | Basics | knows how styles cascade and can code external and inline CSS to alter the appearance of HTML elements |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | CSS | Media queries | can translate CSS media query syntax to alter HTML elements for various sized display sizes |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | JavaScript | Basics | understands the general JS syntax and data structures and can implement basic HTML5 field validation |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | JavaScript | Forms and libraries | can craft a basic AJAX form submission and is familiar with common JS libraries |
| Intermediate | Email Studio | Server-side JavaScript | Basics | understands when to use Server-side JavaScript and what libraries are available for interacting with SFMC |
| Advanced | Email Studio | Server-side JavaScript | Helper functions | can retrieve Subscriber and Data Extension data using the Server-side JavaScript helper functions in the context of a CloudPage |
| Advanced | Email Studio | Server-side JavaScript | Content Syndication | knows how to retrieve content from outside of SFMC and store it for use in SFMC |
| Intermediate | Contact Builder | Basics | understands how to configure data extensions for use in Journey Builder and MobileConnect | |
| Intermediate | Journey Builder | Basics | familiar with the methods for starting someone on a journey and how to configure data source for decision splits | |
| Intermediate | CloudPages | HTML/CSS Basics | understands responsive design and coding | |
| Intermediate | CloudPages | One-Click Unsubscribe pages | can configure a page that accepts the send context and successfully logs an unsub event and displays a confirmation message | |
| Intermediate | CloudPages | Code Resource pages | can build a code resource page that returns a JSON object to a referring page | |
| Advanced | CloudPages | Data Capture Forms | knows how form posts and AJAX work in CloudPages and use the API functions to capture data in SFMC data extensions | |
| Advanced | CloudPages | Custom Preference Centers | can build API calls with AMPscript or Server-side JavaScript to implement a custom preference center | |
| Intermediate | MobileConnect | Basics | knows how to create dynamic content in MobileConnect messages | |
| Advanced | MobileConnect | Scripting | can script MobileConnect messages to read data from a data extension or write data to a data extension | |
| Intermediate | Social Studio | Basics | understands the basics of Social Studio and knows how to create audiences in Email Studios | |
| Intermediate | Integrations | Sales/Service Cloud | Marketing Cloud Connect | familiar with how the data models are different between SFMC and SF CRM, what is created when they are integrated |
| Intermediate | Integrations | API | REST/SOAP API | can make a test API call using SOAP or REST from outside of the SFMC platform |
| Advanced | Integrations | API | Consultation | has a level of familiarity with the SFMC web services to consult with a client who is designing an API integration with SFMC |
| Advanced | Integrations | API | Transactional Messaging API | can create a transactional messaging send definition for Email and SMS and can demonstrate how to register webhooks for reporting |
| Advanced | Integrations | API | Content Block SDK | knows how to configure a custom content block in an external host and integrate it into Content Builder |
| Advanced | Integrations | API | Custom Journey Builder Activity | can build a custom Journey Builder activity that integrates with a third-party system |
| Advanced | Integrations | General | Einstein Recommendations | understands how to configure foundational Einstein recommendations data in SFMC and can advise client teams with tracking integrations |
I’d love to hear from you about this. What would you add or remove? Leave a comment below.
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