Hello Every one. Hope every one had a wonderful New Year!

Since Marketo Specializations are going to retire on 31st January 2019, I decided to create a short write up on the significance of Marketo Specializations, Which ones can be focused on with relative ease and how to focus on the tough ones. Having completed all the 11 specializations, I often get questions on which specialization to focus on and which ones are easy. Below are the details on What are specialization, The specifics, its benefits and most importantly, which ones to focus on given the time restriction.

By earning Specializations, you demonstrate your mastery of advanced techniques that accelerate results and unlock the full potential of Marketo. Specializations does not have an expiry date. So every one who manages to get certified in specializations, will continue to be recognized even after the Specialization exams retire on 31st January! Each Specialization exam consists of 30 questions which has to be finished within 60 minutes. The passing percentage is 75%, which means you need to get at least 23 questions correct to obtain the passing percentage!Each specialization costs $25 USD, whether you're taking it for the first time or retaking it!

Specializations are extremely beneficial and most importantly, it gives you the opportunity to explore and learn all significant areas in Marketo. There are 11 specializations that Marketo offers. Below are the details on all of them.

1. Programs & Campaigns
2. Nurture & Engagement
3. Events & Webinars
4. Customizing Creative Assets
5. Analytics & Reporting
6. Setup & Configuration
7. Email Deliverability
8. Social Marketing
9. Account-Based Marketing
10. Web Personalization
11. Analytics Attribution

I have mentioned the above specializations from the relatively easy ones to the relatively tough ones!This would vary based on ones own experience in Marketo. I'd say a lot of questions in Marketo Specializations are scenario based. So it is best if you have good practical working knowledge in each of the specialization area that you are looking to attempt

How I prepared? - Well, By the time I had completed my Marketo Certification for the second time, I pretty much brushed up most of the topics in:

The relatively easy ones - Programs & Campaigns, Nurture & Engagement, Events & Webinars, Customizing Creative Assets, Analytics & Reporting  (Marketo Out Of Box Reporting)and Setup & Configuration, Email Deliverability and Social Marketing.

The relatively not so easy ones  - were Account-Based Marketing, Web Personalization, Analytics Attribution and  Web Personalization. But again, my calling these areas "Not so easy" was because of the level of expertise I possessed on these topics at the time. This is why I consider the Specializations so important because not only did these prompt me to dive deep in these areas and learn them, but it also enabled me to put these into practice in my own organization, work extensively with clients in all the above mentioned areas and starting to create a Center of Excellence or used cases if you will, in our own sandbox and production instance.So what I did for each of these topics was to follow a 4 step approach.

• Pick each topic, and thoroughly scan through the product docs for that specific topic. By this time you already have a good understanding of the respective topics!
• Go through the Videos available in the Learning Paths (Hyperlinked) and attempt the mock questions available after each of the topic given in the learning path.
• Use keywords and scan the entire Marketo community for all available learning resource, solved Questions and discussions on those respective topics.
• Last but not the least, Try put the above learning into practice by working on an actual client projects in those respective areas. If actual client projects are not available, Try to create at-least a basic business/used cases on each of the topics on your own, define flows for them in lucid charts and create sample implementations and re-usable templates in your sandbox instance

Once these steps are followed, any one can most certainly pass the specialization Exams. For Marketo Certified Expert's, my suggestion would be to start of with the first set of specializations. Since you have already prepared and completed the MCE exam,  the first set of topics should be easy to prepare and complete.

Hope this helps. Feel free to comment below or reach out for any queries!