Salesforce Marketing Cloud Administrator study plan

Map the Marketing Cloud account hierarchy: explain how a parent business unit, child business units, and shared data relate, and sketch where each exam scenario would live.

Reproduce the user-provisioning flow: create a user, assign a role, and override a single permission to demonstrate least-privilege design.

Compare standard roles, custom roles, and permission granularity, and state which business-unit scope each assignment carries.

Draft a one-page glossary of Setup vocabulary (business unit, role, permission, installed package, SSO) in your own words.

Configure sender authentication artifacts (sender profiles, verified sending domains, reply mail management basics) and note which settings are inherited by child business units.

Register and inspect an installed package: identify scopes granted and why scope creep is a security defect.

Define the contact model: distinguish subscriber key from email address and locate where each is set.

Build one data extension from scratch with correct field types, primary key, and retention settings.

Model a relational data model: create a parent-child data extension pair and validate the relationship in Query Studio or the relationship UI.

Import subscriber data three ways (manual file import, import activity, API-style data load planning) and document what each does on a duplicate record.

Explain and demonstrate the difference between lists, groups, filtered data extensions, and suppression lists.

Construct a filtered data extension and a SQL query that produce the same audience, then compare performance and refresh behavior.

Trace contact deletion and contact retention behavior end to end, including what happens to related send and tracking data.

Configure an email send definition's supporting objects: send classification, delivery profile, and sender profile, and state which field overrides which.

Compare the three audience-selection paths (list, data extension, filtered DE) for a send and pick the correct one for four given scenarios.

Set up central preference and publication list concepts well enough to explain how a global unsubscribe differs from a list unsubscribe.

Build a MobileConnect message and account setup: short code or long code keyword, response message, and opt-in/opt-out handling.

Configure MobilePush or a second channel and identify which setup artifacts differ from the email channel.

Explain IP warming and send throttling, and outline a warming schedule for a dedicated IP.

Verify tracking options (link, pixel, and channel-specific tracking) and record the admin settings that enable them.

Configure account security administration: password policy, IP allowlist, SSO or two-factor requirements, and session behavior.

Set up an SFTP or file-drop location and document the import activity that consumes it, including file-naming conventions and error notification.

Audit Marketing Cloud Connect or an API integration: list the granted scopes and the single point of failure if credentials rotate.

Explain data retention, tracking, and audit log settings, and name what evidence you would produce in a security review.

Design a full user lifecycle runbook: onboarding, role change, and offboarding, including what must be revoked first.

Diagnose three common failures (failed automation, stuck send, bounced import) and write the first five triage steps for each.

Compare send-log and tracking-extract monitoring approaches, and specify which one answers 'did the send complete?' versus 'who engaged?'

Draft a business-unit setup checklist an admin could run to launch a new brand child BU in under a day.

Re-derive every week's deliverable from memory and list the gaps you cannot reconstruct.

Run two timed, full-length practice sets and tag every miss to a domain and a specific concept.

Rebuild the ten weakest concepts in a sandbox rather than re-reading notes.

Condense your reference sheets into one final exam-day sheet of at most 20 lines.