Why marketing certifications are a smart investment for IT professionals

In today’s digital-first world, consumer expectations for brand interactions are high. Customers expect every online and offline interaction to be contextually relevant and engaging. And meeting these expectations isn’t just one team’s responsibility — multiple teams, including IT and marketing, need to work together to make exceptional customer experiences possible.

Marketers are tasked with delivering compelling customer experiences while also driving business growth. To accomplish this, marketers often focus on testing and integrating new technologies into their tech stacks. And while the right technology is critical, it’s not the only piece that’s needed. People with the right skills are also a critical component of designing and delivering personalized customer experiences successfully.

Additionally, IT teams are tasked with helping marketing teams to identify, integrate, and deploy new technologies that add value. For them, the right people with the right skillsets are also mission-critical to creating and orchestrating the personalized, at-scale experiences consumers expect.

Working together

An interesting trend is surfacing as IT and marketing teams collaborate more closely: IT practitioners are investing in learning about marketing tech, and they’re getting marketing certifications. And Adobe is leading the way in making this possible on a wider scale.

“The digital economy has required every company to reimagine their marketing and broader customer experience technologies. The demand for people with the qualifications to help these companies digitally transform has never been greater,” says Loni Stark, vice president of strategy and product at Adobe. “Adobe certifications help both employees and companies align on an industry-recognized standard of technical knowledge on Adobe Experience Cloud.”

How certification benefits the IT professional

Taking the time to get certified can be beneficial for professional development. Certifications are a validation of a professional’s knowledge and skillset in a particular area and can help open doors for more opportunities and even increased pay.

• More opportunities to lead
  Certified professionals are often offered the opportunity to influence and lead strategic IT projects. IDC reported that IT professionals with one certification have more than twice the influence on strategic IT projects as IT professionals with no certifications in their first year.
• Higher earning potential
  Salaries are often a marker of a professional’s skills and knowledge. Certifications are just one of many ways for IT professionals to illustrate their capabilities, and getting certified can pay off through higher salary opportunities. For the first time in Certification Magazine’s "Salary Survey 75," four Adobe Experience Manager certifications were included in the top 20 certifications.
• Showcase expertise
  While certifications aren’t the only reason why an IT professional makes a certain salary, they are certainly an important way to validate someone’s expertise. Adobe certifications are created through an intensive process of defining target audiences, documenting job tasks, developing and reviewing questions, conducting beta tests of items, and determining a passing score. All of this is done with the goal of showcasing the right level of expertise in Adobe Experience Cloud applications.

Value beyond professional development

While certainly valuable for professional development, certifications can drive business value for each company that employs these certified professionals. With certified IT professionals on staff, organizations will likely see greater productivity and quantifiable results. Here are a few examples:

• Employee efficiency
  IT professionals that hold certifications related to their role are often able to accomplish tasks more efficiently. According to IDC, certified app developers are nearly 90% more productive and 60% more efficient than those without certifications.
• Greater agility
  IT organizations with certified team members typically have greater operational reliability, which means they can shift their attention to supporting internal and external customers with business applications like content management systems — and that leads to more rapid innovation and greater agility.
• Increased revenue potential
  Companies looking for partners to help integrate Adobe technology can feel more confident knowing they are working with certified professionals who have deep expertise in the technology and make the most of their Adobe Experience Cloud implementation. In fact, our own data reflects that each Adobe certification is correlated with about $50,000 a year in revenue for our solution partners.

No matter why an IT professional decides to expand their skillset through on-demand training, it’s clear that marketing technology is no longer just for marketers. To deliver engaging and personalized experiences consumers demand, there has to be a collaboration between IT and marketing.

Learn more about certifications across all Adobe Experience Cloud applications and join our Solution Partner program.