Salesforce dropped Marketing Cloud Next in June 2025, and it’s shaking up how businesses connect with customers. This tool isn’t just an upgrade, but rather a whole new approach to marketing.
Built on Salesforce’s core platform and with Data Cloud at its heart, Marketing Cloud Next uses smart AI to turn one-way messages into real conversations. Here’s a look at what makes Marketing Cloud Next special, how it stacks up against older Salesforce marketing tools, and why it’s a big deal for businesses.
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next?
Marketing Cloud Next is Salesforce’s next big thing for marketing, designed to abandon those old “do-not-reply” emails and make every interaction feel personal. It’s powered by Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI that works like a teammate, handling repetitive tasks so marketers can focus on strategy and creativity.
Built right into Salesforce’s platform, Marketing Cloud Next pulls in near real-time data from Data Cloud to create seamless, two-way connections with customers across channels such as email, mobile, web, and more.
Lots of older marketing tools used to just tack on AI like it’s an afterthought, but Marketing Cloud Next is built differently—AI is baked right into its core, making it smarter and way easier to use.
It pulls together the best parts of Salesforce’s earlier acquisitions, like ExactTarget ( now Marketing Cloud Engagement) and Pardot (now Marketing Cloud Account Engagement), into one smooth platform that handles both B2B and B2C.
This means fewer headaches with messy integrations, smooth operations, and more time and money saved for your team.
As Steve Hammond, Salesforce’s EVP & GM of Marketing Cloud, put it, “By offloading the manual, repetitive tasks to Agentforce, marketers can focus on big picture strategy and being a value multiplier across the business.”
How it compares to today’s Salesforce marketing products
Salesforce has a bunch of marketing products—Marketing Cloud Engagement, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (former Pardot), Marketing Cloud Growth, and Marketing Cloud Advanced. The role of Marketing Cloud Next is to pull all these together into something new and better. Here’s the breakdown:
Marketing Cloud Engagement: This is the old ExactTarget, great for B2C campaigns like email and SMS. But it runs on separate systems, so connecting it to Salesforce’s core platform can be a hassle.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: Formerly Pardot, this one’s for B2B, focusing on lead nurturing and sales handoffs. It’s closer to Salesforce’s core but still not fully integrated.
Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Editions: Launched in 2024, these brought some Data Cloud integration, but they’re limited compared to MCN’s full-on AI and data power.
Marketing Cloud Next: Marketing Cloud Next ties everything together, using Data Cloud for instant data access and Agentforce to handle tasks automatically. It delivers a unified solution for marketing, sales, and service, effectively supporting both B2B and B2C strategies without the need for multiple additional tools.
You don’t need to rip out what you have today. Marketing Cloud Next is designed to work alongside existing Salesforce tools while you adopt new capabilities over time.
Source: Salesforce
What stands out (and what’s available now)
Marketing Cloud Next groups work into four practical areas—Create, Engage, Qualify, Optimize—with named capabilities you’ll see in docs and demos:
- Create: Build Campaigns in a Snap
With Agentforce Campaign Creation, you can go from idea to live campaign in hours, not weeks. Tell the AI what you want—like a campaign to boost a new product—and it’ll write the brief, pick the audience, draft emails or texts, and set up the customer journey. It can even pull in data from places like Google Drive or Zendesk to make campaigns feel more personal.
- Engage: Turn Messages into Conversations
No more dead-end “do-not-reply” emails. With Agentforce Personalization Decisioning and Agentforce Web Curation, Marketing Cloud Next tailors content on the fly based on what customers are doing or what they like. For example, it can tweak a website’s layout or messaging for each visitor, making every interaction feel custom-made.
- Qualify: Keep Leads Warm 24/7
Agentforce Lead Generation & Management takes care of leads around the clock. The AI adds them to nurture programs, sends personalized messages, chats with them in multiple languages, and even books meetings. Plus, there are built-in checks to make sure everything stays on-brand, so you don’t lose control.
- Optimize: Make Campaigns Work Harder
With Agentforce Paid Media Optimization and Segment Intelligence, you get real-time insights to tweak campaigns on the go. The platform’s AI closely monitors ad performance, automatically pausing underperforming campaigns and recommending smarter targeting options. It highlights which audiences are delivering the strongest results, helping you optimize your budget for maximum impact.
Why it matters
Faster from brief to build: Agents draft journeys and assets so teams can ship sooner.
Personalization without the pile-up: Decisions use Data Cloud in near real time across email, SMS, and web.
Less swivel-chair work: A platform-first approach aims to cut the friction between B2B and B2C tools.
Guardrails included: Observability and human review points are part of the design.
Ready to put Marketing Cloud Next into action? Level up with Focus on Force’s Marketing Cloud Email Specialist and Marketing Cloud Engagement Administrator courses and access clear Study Guides and Practice Exams that help you build better journeys, pass your certs, and deliver results faster.
