The First Setup Steps, In Order

Salesforce publishes quick-start guides for Next, and the useful thing about them is not the screenshots — it is the order. Most stalled setups I've seen did the steps in a sensible-looking but wrong sequence and then hit a prerequisite wall.

The order

• Decide who the admins are and assign the permission sets. Data Cloud Admin, Marketing Cloud Admin and the analytics app user are the usual ones.
• Enable Marketing Cloud in Setup and work through Basic Settings.
• Install the data kits. The marketing data kit comes before the performance/reporting kit — the second one depends on the first.
• Configure identity resolution so one person isn't three audience members.
• Set up the email channel, including domain authentication.
• Install and switch on reporting.

The step that takes longest

Domain authentication. It is a handful of DNS records, but it is someone else's handful — IT or an external vendor. Start that conversation on day one, not the week you want to send. Everything else on the list is clicks; this one is a queue.

A second, separate guide

Sending an actual campaign is its own quick start: import leads and contacts, import consent data, create a campaign, attach a segment, customise the email, preview and test, publish, send or schedule, then review performance. Treat it as a checklist for a first end-to-end proof rather than a design for your real programme.

Advanced configuration — Einstein features, data graphs — is deliberately left out of the quick starts. That's the right call. Get one email out first.