Marketing Cloud Next
Data Kits, and Why They Come First
What a data kit installs, why the marketing kit is a prerequisite for reporting, and what to check after installation.
- Data 360
- Data kits
- Setup
A data kit is a packaged bundle of Data 360 objects and mappings that Salesforce ships for you. Rather than modelling marketing data from scratch, you install the kit and get the standard shape — the objects, relationships and field mappings the rest of the product expects to find.
Why the order matters
The marketing data kit installs first. The reporting and performance pieces build on the objects it creates, so installing them the other way round fails or half-works in a way that is annoying to unpick. If a setup feels stuck at reporting, this is the first thing I check.
What to look at once it's installed
- Which data model objects appeared, and which of them you will actually populate.
- Whether your source fields map cleanly, or whether you're about to invent a transformation.
- The unique identifier on each source — this is the input to identity resolution, and a weak one here is expensive later.
The habit worth keeping from Engagement: a data model you can explain in one diagram survives staff changes. A clever one doesn't.
Installing a kit doesn't bring data. It brings the shape the data will sit in. Ingestion is a separate job.