Marketing Cloud Consultant Certification – Automation

his is in continuation to my Marketing Cloud Consultant Certification blog series and we will discuss the “Automation” section here, which is all about Automation Studio.

The Previous Blog is Marketing Cloud Consultant Certification – Data Design

If we look at the salesforce certification study guide, Automation has 2 topics with 8% weight. It’s a very easy topic and you should be able to score full marks.

Have a look at Automation Studio first and understand the key capabilities and activities available. I strongly encourage you to at least create simple automation with different activities so that you can understand the available activities and how they are configured.

  • Automation Studio 
    • can be executed in 2 ways.
      • Triggered Automation (When a file is dropped in SFMC FTP)
      • Scheduled Automation ( hourly, daily etc)
    • performs the action in batch (not 1:1 execution like the journey builder)
      • Sending Email / SMS / Push
      • Advertising Studio Audience is not available (Journey Builder has this)
    • can perform data activities (Journey Builder doesn’t have this)
      • Import data into SFMC
      • export data from SFMC into an FTP location
      • run SQL queries
      • run SSJS
    • has a wait activity (duration / specified time)
    • understand all activities within Automation Studio
    • doesn’t have Sales & Service cloud activities (Journey Builder has this)

Now, let’s look at the topics in this section.

  • Given a customer scenario, select the appropriate workflow that meets the business requirement (I.e. import, segmentation, email send).
    • If you get a scenario where you have to import encrypted/zipped file from FTP, you have to use a file transfer activity to decrypt/unzip the file before importing file to a DE.
    • You can run your SQL Query activity before email send so that correct data is available for email send. Remember, segmentation has to be done before sending the emails
    • If you have to extract data in a specific format, you will have to first use SQL to populate data in the specific format in a data extension, then use a data extract activity from a data extension and push to FTP using a file transfer activity.
  • Compare and contrast triggered and scheduled interactions.
    • If a question is related to automation and it mentions that a file will be available in the FTP always at a specific time, your answer will be an option starting with scheduled automation. Scheduled automation’s are used when you know the time a file is pushed into FTP and it always runs at a scheduled time.
    • If a question is related to automation and there is an uncertainty whenthe file will be pushed to FTP (ex; a day before last working day / if a date falls on over the weekend, it will be available on last Friday etc), your answer will be an option starting with a Triggered Automation. Triggered Automation’s are fired as soon as a file hits a specific location within FTP.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any specific questions.

Reference : https://sfdcleo.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/marketing-cloud-consultant-certification-automation/

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