Marketing Cloud Next: The King Has An Heir
- Daniel Barnett
- Apr 14
- 6 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
Table of content
Summary
Ushering in an era commonly referred to as Agentic Marketing, Marketing Cloud Next is Salesforce's attempt to rebuild marketing from the ground up on its core platform, with Data 360 as the data layer and Agentforce as the AI engine. The vision is both compelling and ambitious. However, the current product is not there yet.
MCN was made available to customers in mid-2025 and is being actively developed, with basic and meaningful features still rolling out on a quarterly and sometimes monthly basis. The reality is that this tool was launched extremely early, and early adopters are getting a platform in motion, unfinished, unpolished, and mostly uncompetitive with alternatives in its current state. 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 invest in a long-term Salesforce infrastructure that will give them a massive advantage once it becomes mainstream and polished.
What it is
MCN 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 content generation, and Salesforce Flows as the automation engine. Marketing Cloud Growth is the entry-level version while Marketing Cloud Advanced is the more advanced edition.
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 magnificent beast to learn and manage. Teams without an advanced Salesforce admin who understands Data Cloud should not underestimate the ramp-up required. For this reason, seeking out a Salesforce consulting firm with in-house expertise is the way to go as few in-house resources know the technology well enough to set it up and run it.
Agentforce and the birth of agentic, administrative marketing
The headline feature and the least mature for marketers. Agentforce promises natural language campaign creation. The idea is magical: 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.
Content generation (GenAI) is in a functionally stable space where, with a well-written prompt, marketers can create content that is on-brand and informative. Salesforce has natively embedded GenAI across Marketing Cloud Next in everything from email and landing page content to internal briefs. Administrative AI, solution architecture, and campaign design is a different story and will get better over time.
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 roadblocks quickly on automation complexity and platform customization. Include the required Data 360 element and you have a space carved out for marketers that is dependent on advanced Salesforce admins for an initial setup and ongoing use.
Content builders: emails and landing pages
Perhaps the weakest area of the tool. Email and landing page builders are rudimentary. Basic modern elements are available but meaningful limitations remain outside of simple layouts. Until recently, landing pages lacked UTM tracking at launch, a foundational reporting capability that has been standard for decades. Marketers lack design tools that are any level beyond rudimentary. Basic styling is available, but there are too many alternatives in the MarTech that have been providing marketers with modern design tools for decades.
Compare Stripo, a drag and drop email builder with MCN's email builder, and you'll see a tool seemingly generations ahead of Salesforce. When you consider the builders Salesforce gave marketers with MCE and MCAE, it really makes you believe that they just don't know marketing or what marketers need to drive productivity, efficiency, and agility. Importing HTML remains the best option until future releases, so account for a 3rd party tool in your budget evaluation.
Feature release cadence
Salesforce is shipping meaningful updates on a quarterly and sometimes monthly basis. Recently released features that most marketers would consider table stakes, merge fields in emails, default form values, hidden fields, UTM parameter capture, are being rolled out as headline updates. Development teams (and AI) are working hard to roll out features, yet the platform remains years away from being a comparable replacement.
Automation
A strength of MCN and 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 universes more powerful than MCAE's Engagement Studio. The tradeoff is that Flows require Salesforce admin expertise to build and maintain effectively. Salesforce introduced marketing flows too; simplified flow builds to help marketers with basic automation, however most marketing use cases will still require traditional flows.
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. Peripheral analytics engines can be integrated; options like Tableau, Marketing Cloud Intelligence, and other solutions marketers have depended on for years are still compatible with the new architecture so reporting shouldn't be a big lift.
How MCN compares to other viable MarTech solutions
vs. HubSpot: Not a replacement, but a nuanced and proactive decision nonetheless. HubSpot has spent decades refining the start-up and mid-market experience and is simply too mature across every marketer-facing dimension. MCN's meaningful advantage is its native Salesforce integration, which absolutely can not be understated and should be the reason every marketer chooses MCN over HubSpot when their company is already a Salesforce customer. Integrations between Salesforce CRM (Sales Cloud) and HubSpot are a major painpoint that becomes an absolute deal-breaker for most, eventually.
vs. MCE: The cqomparison is complicated. MCE's power comes from its developer extensibility. With some technical chops, developers can write scripts to segment against complex data relationships, personalize content, and manage large data sets. Despite its tech being built in the 90s and its gruesome UX, MCE remains the tool that can do just about anything with the right craftsmanship.
MCN feels just as dependent on technical resources. Just a very different technical acumen. All this is to say that marketing teams lacking technical skillsets won't make it very far on either tool. The mostly eliminates small teams. However, for small teams with access to Salesforce admins, MCN might be the more viable approach. For larger, enterprise accounts, MCE still should be considered the strong incumbent.
vs. MCAE: This is the most realistic replacement scenario. MCN's Flow-based automation is materially more capable than Engagement Studio. Reporting is stronger natively. While MCN's content builders are minimal, so are MCAE's. For Salesforce-native teams with admin support, MCN is a very defensible upgrade from MCAE.
vs. Marketo: Not a viable comparison today for most teams, even existing Salesforce organizations. Marketo is the standard-bearer for mid-market and 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 360 should consider MCN a viable approach. Anyone building a net-new Salesforce marketing stack who does not need the deliverability and data depth of MCE should also consider MCN as part of their mid to long-term roadmap.
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.
The good news for MCE users is there are integration points with MCN, so having the best of the both the short and long-term benefits is very much in reach with the right budget (treat your CFO to lunch they'll never forget).
