Marketing Cloud Connector

Question

I'm going to make a connection between Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud. I'm very new at it and never done that before. Before the project starts, I've did some research to prepare myself to make it right. I made some notes based on documentation and I have some questions. I believe you could help me a little:

1. What does it mean - "Subscriber Key is required for Marketing Cloud Connect. If it is not enabled in your Marketing Cloud account, complete a Subscriber Key Migration before proceeding with the connection process." As far as I know, subscriber key is a kind of ID that every subscriber has. If I'm wrong - how to find out if this functionality is enable in my org?

2. How can I find out, which version of Marketing Cloud environment I use? I know that business units will be needed so we should have Enterprise 2.0. Can I check a version of environment by myself or is that something that customer should inform me about?

3. As connection process is quite complex, I'd like to make it first on testing environment. I know that there is a possibility to make a copy of original org in Sales Cloud (sandbox), but is there the same possibility to make a copy of original Marketing Cloud org? I've read that to get access to a SMC sandbox, I should contact with my Salesforce rep, but I don't know if that's still possible. And I've also read that Marketing Cloud sandbox doesn't support Marketing Cloud Connect (but this is an information from April).

Answer 1

1. Historically, Marketing Cloud accounts were created without the Subscriber Key feature being activated. This meant that the Email Address field was used as the unique identifier for all subscribers. In essentially all newer accounts Subscriber Key will be automatically enabled, but older accounts may still not have it. If it's not enabled, you will need to contact support to have it enabled on your account and either work with them to migrate the subscribers Salesforce ID as their Subscriber Key, or start with Email Address as their Subscriber Key and deal with the potential duplication on your end.

   To confirm if you have it enabled, you can simply check the All Subscribers list and confirm that you see the Subscriber Key field listed for each record.

2. As far as I am aware this is not visible to users anywhere within the account. You can reference the billing statement from Salesforce if you own the account, or ask the customer who owns the account, or by contacting support.

3. No, there is no ability to create a Sandbox from within a SFMC account. A Sandbox account typically comes with a steep fee and lives in silo from any of your existing accounts. Speaking from experience, unless you are just trying to play around and learn Connector functionality, I would not recommend going down the Sandbox path (for either Sales Cloud or SFMC). SFMC does not offer a seamless switch between Salesforce Orgs, meaning your Marketing Cloud Connect will have to be broken when making the switch to Production Org and you will have to start over with a lot of things (Field Mapping, User Mapping, Journey Activities, Synchronized Data Sources, etc.)