What do you think of the new MCE Exam? Any test tips for those taking it at Summit?

[Michelle_Miles3]

For those of you who have taken the new MCE exam, I am curious what you thought of it!

[Anonymous]

I took the test earlier this week, and passed right at 70%.

It was fairly straightforward, though there is some tricky wording and I recommend going back through and reading carefully if there's time. Also, one thing I found frustrating is that, since there are 10 ways to do the same task in Marketo, I'd often not find the way I'd specifically do something (especially regarding reporting) in the answers, and would then get it wrong. So definitely read through the product docs at length.

As far as the prep course, I got to take it for free, but I'm not sure I learned much new from it that I didn't already know from reading the product docs, and I didn't feel like there was any room for Q&A, which would have been nice.

Still, as long as you have good attention to detail for the way things are worded, and you use Marketo on a daily basis for a variety of functions, then you should be okay.

Good luck!

[Lynn_Ray_Pardo]

Congratulations on passing the test, Alex - a win is a win!

And thank you so much for making time to provide your feedback.

Lynn

[Anonymous]

I was one of the Beta testers and this was my very first time taking a Marketo certification test. I have been using Marketo for 9 months, but had used other MAPs previously for 5 years. IMHO, the test had some gotcha wording and yes, they asked several of the same questions repeatedly in different awkward ways. I took the "practice" exam multiple times at about 105 questions and completed in about 60 mins. The beta exam had 230 questions and it took me almost the complete 3 hrs to take it. The directions stated you could read the questions out loud, yet when I did that a couple of times because they just weren't making sense to me, my proctor stopped the exam and told me it wasn't allowed. Some of the subject matter in the beta exam was not addressed at all in the practice exams. Alot of questions on reporting, some on lead scoring, some answers more obvious than others. Since I had no other MCE to compare against (I am certified on other systems), I'd say overall the test was challenging. I was ecstatic to learn I had passed!

[Carolanne_Mak]

Just took the new exam today (first year certification) after studying for the old version for almost three months - I thought it was hard.

While the spelling and general formatting of the questions have drastically improved from the old practice test, I would not say that "gotcha!" wording has been totally removed. I found the sample questions from the training to be fairly straightforward, but the actual test had reworded versions that shifted focus of the question or asked for different information, sometimes awkwardly. There were also questions that (as far as I remember) were not mentioned in the training, sample questions, or recommended reads for either test version - marketing topics like creating a scoring plan, for example.

[Josh_Hill13]

The challenge with the Old test wasn't just memorization, but I encountered several "MCE" people who really had no idea how to build a whitepaper program in Marketo. So the new test that many of us helped add questions to, was designed to ask meaningful "work related questions." There were plenty of variations on similar situations because we wanted to have people who could be that flexible.

I am also unhappy with certain aspects of the test creation process that you are now seeing in how some questions are worded. It's pretty hard to build a "fair" test.

[Lynn_Ray_Pardo]

I haven't taken it yet, but after reviewing MKTO's newly released sample questions and answers, I am disconcerted to have found a mistake within MKTO's newly released sample set. Sample Questions,  (One of the questions/answers has no correct answer within the multi-choice answer set. Thankfully, at least, reference url provided for their (albeit) incorrect answer is correct.) 

In previous sample tests, I found many strange questions with odd or no logical multi-choice answers and sincerely hope that the actual test does not reflect similarly.

All of that said, thank you so very much for getting this thread started!

Lynn

[Ayana_Nickerson]

Hi Lynn,

Thank you so much for your feedback regarding the sample questions.  Did you post the sample question you had concerns about?

Thanks so much.

Ayana

[Dan_Stevens_]

It's 7 replies above yours (in large font): A marketer wants to launch a new gated asset on a company website using a Marketo embedded form...

[Dan_Stevens_]

Which question specifically?

[Lynn_Ray_Pardo]

Hi Dan,

It's this question where the correct answer-Lightbox- is not within the multiple choice options.

"A marketer wants to launch a new gated asset on a company website using a Marketo embedded form.   Which functionality is used for Marketo embedded forms?

A. reCAPTCHA
B. Form Pre-fill
C. Progressive Profiling
D. Suppress Competitor form fills

Answer is C
Reference: http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Use+a+Form+in+a+Lightbox  "

Fortunately, for review purposes, the reference URL is correct but it doesn't bode well for test questions.

(I did send a note to MKTO re: this.)

Thank you for your feedback,
Lynn

[Robb_Barrett]

Ayana Nickerson​  I don't know how this one would have gotten through.  PP (which was my part of the test) isn't something that embedded forms can support really since they can't read the Marketo cookie to identify the lead (unless iFramed in via a page.) I wouldn't have written the question as such regardless. It looks like this somehow got the question and answer switched up.

None of these answers are possible with an embedded form on a non-marketo landing page. 

Lynn Ray Magers-Pardo wrote:

Hi Dan,

It's this question where the correct answer-Lightbox- is not within the multiple choice options.

"A marketer wants to launch a new gated asset on a company website using a Marketo embedded form. Which functionality is used for Marketo embedded forms?

A. reCAPTCHA
B. Form Pre-fill
C. Progressive Profiling
D. Suppress Competitor form fills

Answer is C
Reference: http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Use+a+Form+in+a+Lightbox "

Fortunately, for review purposes, the reference URL is correct but it doesn't bode well for test questions.

(I did send a note to MKTO re: this.)

Thank you for your feedback,
Lynn

[SanfordWhiteman]

Robb, like Dan said, ProgPro works on non-Marketo LPs. ProgPro doesn't read data out of the cookie value (neither does Pre-Fill, for that matter -- they use the cookie as the key for a database lookup, but the cookie is just a unique id).

With ProgPro, the db lookup merely needs to tell the forms lib whether a field has *a* value or not, not what that value is. As such, it can function across all domains that share an associated Munchkin cookie.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Progressive Profiling works with embedded forms on non-Marketo LPs.  Progressive Profiling/Form Prefill on Embedded form

[Grégoire_Miche2]

I am just the French guy, here, but isn't this a simple grammar error in this sentence Which functionality is used for Marketo embedded forms?

If it was simply written "Which functionality could be used on the Marketo embedded form?" or something similar, the answer C would seem more natural wouldn't it?

-Greg

[SanfordWhiteman]

It would still be wrong because "ReCAPTCHA" and "Suppress competitors" can both be used on embedded forms exactly as they can be on Marketo LPs. They aren't built-in features in either case, but they're equally doable.

I really, really hate poorly QA'd tests. We see it in big-name regulatory compliance certs as well. People don't like to put their best + brightest in charge of writing tests because it's "beneath their pay grade" but that's a bad move.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

The funny thing (and again, that it probably because, as a foreigner, I probably miss some nuances) I would not have failed that question. Mainly because, in the context of the test (that focuses on Marketo out of the box functionality), only the answer C is possible. B is simply not possible and A and D are not OOB. But I agree it's more reasoning by the absurd.

-Greg

[SanfordWhiteman]

This question is so idiotic I don't even know where to start.

But like Dan said, the missing answer isn't "Lightbox."

If the question were "Which of these technologies work natively/automatically on Marketo LPs but not on embedded forms?" the answer would be B. It almost seems like that's the question they meant to ask, and the difference b/t ProgPro and Pre-Fill would then be well highlighted.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I noticed this as well - and to be honest - Lightbox wouldn't be the correct answer either.  Our website has hundreds of embedded forms on it and none use Lightbox - just the embed code.  So I was expecting a choice like "javascript embed code".  And certainly none of the potential answers that were listed here.  What's listed here are features that might exist with an embedded form - and C is the only correct answer (since pre-fill does not work natively; and the other two just don't make sense).

[Lynn_Ray_Pardo]

Thanks, Dan,

I hope MKTO uses rigorous Q&A before releasing the test.  Test taking is tough enough without whacky questions ha, ha!

[Josh_Hill13]

Oddly enough, there was A LOT of QA. Probably too much. I also saw this question on the Beta and am disappointed it wasn't removed from the live test.