Marketing Cloud Next: The King Has An Heir
- Daniel Barnett
- Apr 14
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 19
Table of content
Summary
Marketing Cloud Next is Salesforce's attempt to rebuild marketing from the ground up on its core platform, with Data Cloud as the data layer and Agentforce as the AI engine. The vision is compelling. The current product is not there yet. MCN was made available to customers in mid-2025 and is being actively developed, with meaningful features still rolling out on a quarterly and sometimes monthly basis. The honest reality is that the tool was launched before it was ready, and early adopters are getting a platform in motion, not a finished product. Bugs are not an edge case on MCN, they are a routine part of the experience. If your team does not have the tolerance for a platform that is visibly still being built, wait. The organizations that will get the most out of MCN right now are those willing to work through instability in exchange for being early on what could eventually be a strong platform.
What it is
MCN is not a single new tool. It is a collaboration of existing Salesforce technologies assembled for marketers: Data Cloud (now branded Data 360) for customer profiles and segmentation, Agentforce for AI-assisted campaign building, and Salesforce Flows as the automation engine. Marketing Cloud Growth and Marketing Cloud Advanced are the two editions, and the product has also been referred to as Agentforce Marketing. Expect the naming to evolve.
Foundation: Data 360
Data 360 is the customer data platform layer that powers MCN's segmentation and personalization. It is genuinely powerful and the most defensible part of the MCN story. It is also a beast to learn and manage. Teams without a Salesforce admin who understands Data Cloud should not underestimate the ramp-up required.
Agentforce and the birth of agentic, administrative marketing
The headline feature and the least mature. Agentforce promises natural language campaign creation, essentially a marketer describes what they want and the agent builds it. The Agentforce Campaign Designer introduced a wizard-style interface in Summer 2025, enabling progress from campaign briefing to content creation, though complex features like branching logic and decision elements were not yet available in that release. The vision is directionally right. The current reality is still a significant distance from what is being promised.
Salesforce admin dependency
Non-negotiable. MCN's automation engine runs on Flows, and deeper platform configuration requires Salesforce admin ownership. This is a meaningful organizational requirement. Teams that lack admin support will hit ceilings quickly on automation complexity and platform customization.
Content builders: emails and landing pages
The weakest area. Email and landing page builders are rudimentary. Basic modern elements are available but meaningful limitations remain outside of simple layouts. Landing pages lacked UTM tracking at launch, a foundational reporting capability that has been standard for decades. Default form field values and hidden fields, including UTM capture via URL parameter, were introduced in the Winter 2026 release, which signals how early-stage the platform is when these are treated as notable feature additions. As with MCE and MCAE, importing HTML is the practical workaround. Stripo integrates well here.
Feature release cadence
Salesforce is shipping meaningful updates on a quarterly and sometimes monthly basis. Features that most marketers would consider table stakes, merge fields in emails, default form values, hidden fields, are being rolled out as headline updates. This is not a criticism of the pace of development so much as it is an honest signal about where the platform stands today relative to alternatives that have had these capabilities for years.
Automation
A genuine upgrade over MCAE and potentially over MCE for teams that want Salesforce-native automation. Because MCN runs on Flows, it inherits all of Flows' capabilities, which are significantly more powerful than MCAE's Engagement Studio. The tradeoff is that Flows require Salesforce admin expertise to build and maintain effectively.
Reporting
A meaningful improvement over both MCAE and MCE natively. Because MCN lives on core Salesforce, reporting integrates more naturally with CRM data and Data Cloud without the connector complexity required in MCE.
How it compares to other tools
vs. HubSpot: Not a replacement. HubSpot has spent decades refining the mid-market experience and is simply too mature across every marketer-facing dimension. MCN's meaningful advantage is its native Salesforce integration. Every other area, from asset building to journey automation, is a step backward in build speed and usability.
vs. MCE: Not really, and the comparison is complicated. MCE's power comes from its data management depth, deliverability infrastructure, and developer extensibility. MCN does not replicate those. For marketing teams that find MCE too technically demanding and have strong Salesforce admin support, MCN is a plausible alternative path, but it is a different tool serving a different operating model.
vs. MCAE: Yes, and this is the most realistic replacement scenario. MCN's Flow-based automation is materially more capable than Engagement Studio. Reporting is stronger natively. The tradeoffs are the weaker content builders, though MCAE's builders are not good either. For Salesforce-native teams with admin support, MCN is a defensible upgrade from MCAE.
vs. Marketo: Not a viable comparison today. Marketo is the standard-bearer for enterprise B2B marketing automation. Its UX enables marketers to build sophisticated programs without developer support, something neither MCN nor any other Salesforce marketing product has achieved. Marketo's only material weaknesses are licensing cost and that it lives in the Adobe ecosystem rather than Salesforce. For mid-market and enterprise organizations with budget and the right skillset, Marketo remains the stronger choice until MCN has had significantly more time to mature.
Who should be watching it
MCAE customers who are Salesforce-native, have admin support, and are frustrated with MCAE's automation and reporting limitations. Organizations already invested in Data Cloud. Anyone building a net-new Salesforce marketing stack who does not need the deliverability and data depth of MCE.
Who should wait
Teams without dedicated Salesforce admin resources. Organizations that need polished, marketer-friendly content creation tools today. Anyone considering MCN as a replacement for HubSpot or Marketo.
Platform in transition
The market widely reads Salesforce's investment in MCN as a signal that MCE and MCAE have a finite runway. To be clear: Salesforce has not announced end-of-life dates for either platform, and both remain actively supported and sold today. But the implications are strong. MCN is being built from the ground up on Salesforce's core platform to support the next generation of AI-driven marketing, and Salesforce's pattern of investment, the depth of MCN's architecture, and the pace of development all point in one direction. It would be naive to plan a long-term MCE or MCAE implementation without acknowledging that a transition is likely coming.
