MARKETING CLOUD / CONFIGURATION
Configuration
Setup decisions you only get to make once: Business Units, Sender Authentication, Send Classifications, Data Extension architecture.
Foundation · 5
Production note
MC Config gotchas: setup decisions you only get to make once
Marketing Cloud configuration looks like a checklist — Business Units, Sender Authentication, Subscriber Key, Send Classifications, DE architecture. Setup once, never look back. The production reality is the opposite: every choice at bootstrap is something you live with for years because the surfaces depending on it make 'just change the config' a multi-week migration. Ten gotchas anchored to Cleon's multi-tenant rollouts.
Decision framework
Business Unit architecture decisions
When to split a tenant into multiple Business Units, when to stay single-BU, the four common patterns (per-brand, per-region, per-product, parent+sandbox), what propagates from parent vs what's isolated, and the decision checklist before creating a new BU. Anchored to Cleon's multi-tenant rollouts and the migration costs of getting the architecture wrong.
Production note
Data Extension architecture: the schema choices you live with
Every other Marketing Cloud system reads or writes Data Extensions. Get the schema right at bootstrap and the tenant operates cleanly for years; get it wrong and every SQL Activity, every AMPscript Lookup, every Journey decision-split inherits the mess. Ten production-note items on naming, primary keys, column types, retention, and the structural choices that compound.
Decision framework
Subscriber Key strategy
SubscriberKey is the column every other system in Marketing Cloud joins on — the identifier that defines who 'the same person' is across DEs, sends, Journeys, and CRM. The choice of what goes into it is one of the bootstrap decisions you live with for the tenant's lifetime. The decision tree, the candidate values, the patterns to prefer, the patterns to refuse, and the migration cost of getting it wrong.
Decision framework
Marketing Cloud Config: Style Guide
The opinionated rules Cleon applies to every Marketing Cloud config decision — naming, documentation, runbook discipline, patterns to prefer, anti-patterns to refuse — distilled from the Config catalog into a single discipline document. Mirrors the SQL, SSJS, and AMPscript Style Guides; closes the catalog at 7 page-pairs.