Marketing Cloud Next: Agentic AI for Real Customer Connections

Publish date:

• 4th December, 2025

Salesforce has launched Marketing Cloud Next, a significant update to its marketing solution that marks the end of traditional 'do-not-reply' marketing. It is more than just a product launch; it changes how we think about marketing. It uses autonomous AI agents that work as ongoing partners. Built on the Salesforce Platform, Marketing Cloud Next makes agentic marketing possible with valuable data, workflows that connect different teams, and AI agents throughout the customer journey. These AI agents turn 'do-not-reply' messages into interactive conversations, making every channel a two-way communication. They also manage complex tasks, such as putting together campaigns, improving performance, and personalizing messages at scale, something we couldn't do before.

Marketing Cloud Next is explicitly built for effective marketing. Unlike other marketing platforms that add AI on top of old systems, it features AI agents that do more than assist—they take action. For example, they can execute tasks like creating a campaign to promote a new product line to valuable customers. On other platforms, AI tends to act like an intern, needing lots of instructions and close supervision. Marketing Cloud Next changes that. Its AI agents, powered by Agentforce, behave like experienced team members who understand your business, take initiative, and achieve results. It allows marketers to spend more time on strategy, creativity, and building strong customer relationships. Additionally, since Marketing Cloud Next is part of the Salesforce Platform, these AI agents can also work in Sales, Service, and Commerce. They help create personalized customer engagement throughout the entire process.

“Salesforce is providing marketers with more than just AI-powered tools through Marketing Cloud Next. They are offering a complete marketing solution,” said Steve Hammond, EVP & GM of Marketing Cloud at Salesforce. “Agentforce changes how work gets done, but it doesn't take away jobs from marketers — it empowers them. By handling manual and repetitive tasks, Agentforce lets marketers focus on big picture strategies and add more value to the business.”

The keynote highlighted how Salesforce uses agents in marketing. It was organized into four main areas: create, engage, qualify, and optimize.

Salesforce has announced Marketing Cloud Next. This new product combines several features they have been developing into one easy-to-use interface called a "launch pad."  

We are seeing real stories from customers who are using the new Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced editions. According to a Salesforce Director, “What a difference a year makes.” It reflects the rising adoption of these editions, the alignment of features with the older versions (MCE/MCAE), and the innovations that go beyond them.

What Is Marketing Cloud Next?

Marketing Cloud Next brings together several different services.

• Agentforce Campaign Creation (with unstructured data activation in Data Cloud)

• Agentforce Personalization Decisioning

• Agentforce Lead Management

• Agentforce Web Curation

• Agentforce Lead Management

• Agentforce Segment Intelligence

Some of you might wonder, “What’s new about this?” It is especially true if you are familiar with the Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced editions. In short, Marketing Cloud Next introduces three key areas that mark a new era of marketing on Salesforce:  

• Combining: Salesforce has made many acquisitions over the years in marketing technology and customer data. Marketing Cloud Next brings together nine of these top acquisitions. 

• Rebuilding: Marketing Cloud Next is built on Data Cloud, which is the leading platform. Salesforce has also updated its personalization engine to work with Data Cloud. It means that all Salesforce products, such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Commerce Cloud, share a standard service.

• Simplifying: In the past, the “Marketing Cloud” offered a mix of services. Now, the same application can support both B2B and B2C models. Salesforce is working to lower costs by reducing the need for multiple integrations within its marketing tools and other platform products.

Salesforce will soon offer Marketing Cloud Next alongside Marketing Cloud Engagement (formerly ExactTarget). It means you can start using the new technology before the complete switch. Salesforce wants to clarify that this process is not a migration; it is a convergence. Your previous investments in segments, automation, and other features will still be available in Marketing Cloud Next. 

"Keep what works and add new ideas." You can understand this by looking at the diagram: "Create your new messages and processes, and use current [Journey Builder] journeys."

What’s New

Marketing Cloud Next includes new tools that help teams work faster, connect with more customers, and achieve better results throughout the customer experience – all from one platform.

• Create: Marketers often miss great opportunities because it takes weeks or even months to execute campaigns. With Agentforce Campaign Creation, marketers can create and launch a campaign in just hours. They can work with Agentforce to develop a complete campaign brief, then use AI agents to make the target audience, draft email and SMS content, and set up the customer journey in Flow. Marketers can also use unstructured data from Data Cloud directly in Marketing Cloud Next, along with content from sources such as Google Drive, SharePoint, Zendesk, blogs, and documents, to enhance campaign personalization and insights.

• Engage: ‘Do-not-reply’ messages can harm customer relationships because they prevent conversations. In Marketing Cloud Next, marketers can turn these dead-end messages into ongoing, engaging interactions across all channels. Agentforce manages responses, adjusts content in real-time, and can even connect customers to human sales or service reps when necessary. Agentforce Personalization Decisioning uses real-time data, such as customer behavior, preferences, and intent, to suggest personalized content and product offers through email, mobile, and web. Agentforce Web Curation creates customized web experiences by changing layouts, messaging, and recommendations for each visitor based on their context and behavior.

• Qualify: Marketers often lose potential customers because the sales team can't follow up quickly enough. With Agentforce Lead Generation & Management, AI agents work on their own to add leads to nurturing programs, get scores, and suggest content. They engage, nurture, and qualify leads 24/7 through web and email. The AI drafts personalized messages, holds conversations, and schedules meetings in different languages. Built-in checks and human reviews ensure quality and brand consistency at every step, allowing teams to maintain control without losing speed.

Today, marketers often cannot see how their campaigns are performing until they are over. It makes it hard to adjust and improve return on investment (ROI). With Agentforce Paid Media Optimization, AI agents monitor ad performance in real time. They pause ads that aren’t performing well and suggest ways to improve targeting and spending based on marketers' goals. Segment Intelligence helps marketers identify which audiences deliver the highest ROI, enabling them to improve their campaigns. Additionally, Salesforce's partnership with LinkedIn allows marketers to track conversion events, synchronize customer and company lists for LinkedIn ad targeting, and access LinkedIn’s Audience Insights directly in Marketing Cloud Next and Data Cloud.

Salesforce’s Agentic MarTech Stack

To support teamwork across different departments using Salesforce, our marketing strategy depends on Agentforce, Data Cloud, and the metadata platform working together with Marketing Cloud Next. This setup enables marketers to connect with these key tools effectively.

Let’s explore the offerings of Marketing Cloud Next, starting with the 'create' pillar.

Agentforce Campaign Creation

“Create campaigns in days, not weeks.” Agentforce works with marketers to develop campaigns from initial idea to launch.

• Agentforce works together with the user to create a complete campaign brief. 

• AI agents help identify the audience and prepare the segments. 

• Draft the email and SMS content in line with our brand guidelines and messaging.

• The customer journey orchestration, also known as Campaign Flow, is set up and ready for you to review and activate. 

The keynote demo started with a Slack conversation, showing that agents can work well in different communication methods.

It's important to highlight the use of unstructured data in Data Cloud. Unstructured data includes items like documents and images—anything that isn’t organized like a database. Starting with Marketing Cloud Next, you can use content from new sources such as Google Drive, SharePoint, Zendesk, blogs, and documents to help create campaigns.

Agentforce Personalization Decisioning

"You can’t build relationships with messages that say ‘do not reply.’" It shows that one-sided messages often do not encourage people to take action. 

We’ve seen Agentforce on websites before, where it goes beyond chatbots to provide helpful replies based on your organization’s customer and product information. What’s new is that Agentforce can change website content in real time and understand feelings even better, thanks to Salesforce’s advanced RAG engine.

The engagement feed on the right shows real-time customer signals, including their behavior, preferences, and intent. Agentforce Personalization Decisioning uses this information.

Agentforce Web Curation

If users leave your website to ask another LLM (like ChatGPT) their product questions, you not only lose their attention but also risk getting recommendations for your competitors.

Agentforce Web Curation, like Personalization Decisioning, changes your website. It suggests recommendations, updates images, and alters the messaging tone. 

Real-time signals from user behavior drive changes to web pages. These signals are gathered using a software development kit (SDK) and are combined with other data stored in Salesforce.

Agentforce Lead Management/Qualification

This approach is exciting because it can help generate revenue. It also helps address the long-standing issue of aligning marketing and sales teams.

Imagine having a BDR working around the clock without complaining about lead quality. It means that prospects are less likely to get lost between marketing and sales. 

In the image below, we see the campaign view in Marketing Cloud Next. This summary provides:  

• A breakdown of the number of contacts by their status.  

• A timeline on the right side showing how Agentforce has interacted with the selected contact and their responses.  

Guided Agent Setup is a new feature that will be available in July 2025. You can access it from Marketing Cloud Next. The process includes five steps, which you can find on the left panel. Key details are highlighted here:

• To set up Agentforce Lead Management, first assign the settings to an AI agent. This agent will work like a user. 

• Email settings include the main value proposition, which tells the agent what they need to know. Next, there are nudge settings that specify the maximum number of outreach attempts the agent can make.

• Product Knowledge means identifying the types of data and files that the AI agent can use during outreach. 

• Prospect Assignment determines how leads or contacts are assigned to an agent. You can add several conditions to this process. 

• You can test the scenarios by choosing a specific lead or contact record from the right-hand panel.

Agentforce Segment Intelligence

Segment Intelligence has been important for a long time. Now, it is part of Marketing Cloud Next. 

The Marketing Intelligence app is designed to turn analytics into actions easily. In the image below, you can see a performance overview chart with the Agentforce panel open on the right. Before this, the user asked the agent about underperforming ads. Pay attention to the hyperlinked actions recommended in the agent’s response.

If the user follows the agent's recommendation and checks the Segment Intelligence dashboard, they can further explore the performance data. For example, they might ask, "Which city has a high conversion rate and low cost per click for these segments?" The dashboard will then display a new visual with the detailed data.

If the user approves, the agent will create the requested section. It will be shown in a straightforward interface for review or changes. Each section also includes a Performance page with metrics and visualizations related to engagement and demographics. 

In June, Salesforce launched the new generation of Marketing Cloud at Connections. The updated features allow for more effective marketing. Now, every channel lets businesses have two-way conversations with customers, and marketing teams have endless digital support. During our Marketing Cloud keynote, we shared five steps to help teams create a strategy for this new marketing approach.

• How can I learn more about the next-gen Marketing Cloud?

• How can I get started with Next-Gen Marketing Cloud?

• As an existing Marketing Cloud customer, how do I access these next-gen capabilities?

How can I learn more about the next-gen Marketing Cloud? 

The next generation of Marketing Cloud is a complete marketing solution that helps you personalize essential moments throughout the customer lifecycle. We have made Marketing Cloud simpler to use and fully unified, with built-in AI agents that work automatically from the start.

Marketers can improve in three key areas: understanding customers, managing cross-channel experiences, and boosting business efficiency.

The next-gen Marketing Cloud is built on Salesforce’s core platform. It means you get more valuable data across your business. It also works well with Sales, Service, and Commerce, helping you create more effective workflows and engage customers one-on-one throughout their journey.

AI agents work as team members behind the scenes. Marketers set goals, such as “increase loyalty among at-risk customers,” and AI agents handle execution. They create campaigns, improve performance, and turn traditional marketing channels into two-way conversations, all at a scale previously unattainable.

Marketers can work faster and achieve better results. Instead of using many different tools, adjusting details, and waiting for approvals, they can focus on what really matters: strategy, creativity, and driving growth.

How can I get started with Next-Gen Marketing Cloud?

If you’re new to Marketing Cloud, start with either the Growth Edition or the Advanced Edition. These options provide basic marketing automation tools. Depending on your needs, you can enhance these tools with add-ons from Marketing Cloud Next, such as Salesforce Personalization, Marketing Intelligence, and Loyalty Management.

If you are already using Marketing Cloud, you can get new features by upgrading to Marketing Cloud+. The next generation of Marketing Cloud works with the tools and processes you already have, so you can keep your current solutions while gaining powerful new capabilities. I’ve outlined the details below.

As a current Marketing Cloud customer, how can I access these new features??

Marketing Cloud Engagement+

With Marketing Cloud Engagement+, you can still access your existing journeys, content, and data. You will also get new features that enhance your current content and data, making them even better.

Engaged customers will get access to these features:

• Digital Wallet. You can easily track and monitor your spending on messaging credits for Email, SMS, and WhatsApp using a user-friendly dashboard.

• Smarter Journey Orchestration in Flow (GA October 2025). Improve journey management with better routing and decision-making in Salesforce Flow. New features help you create agents that can smartly choose the next best journey or path based on each customer's profile, actions, and situation—without needing any code.
  You can now connect journeys. It allows customers to move automatically from one journey to another based on what they do (or don’t do). It creates more personalized experiences that work across different channels and departments.

• Marketing Performance and Campaign Dashboards (GA October 2025). Track how well your campaigns are doing with easy-to-understand dashboards. These dashboards provide clear information on email delivery and how your campaigns perform over time.

How much does Marketing Cloud Engagement+ cost? 

Here is a glance:

• Pro: $2,000/month
• Corporate: $5,500/month
• Enterprise: $30,000/month

Check out the detailed pricing page.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement+ 

Great news! You now have access to next-gen Marketing Cloud features. These features come with your Account Engagement setup. All your data, lists, and content work well together in both Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth Edition and Advanced Edition. It means you can create and launch campaigns without rebuilding your assets or duplicating your efforts.

Account Engagement customers will get access to these features:

• Agentforce. All Marketing Cloud Account Engagement customers can now use Agentforce Campaign Creation. This feature lets you easily create campaigns, campaign briefs, emails, and multi-channel flows using simple language prompts with more customer details.

• Multichannel Messaging. You can now create engagement journeys using email, SMS, or WhatsApp for your customers. Before, you needed a separate app to send SMS and WhatsApp messages with Account Engagement. Now, you can also use Unified Conversations for SMS and WhatsApp to turn one-way promotions into two-way conversations.

• Improved Personalization. Now it’s easier to personalize your messages with Cross-Object Merge Fields. For example, if a contact attended a webinar, you can include their contact details, service history, and more to customize your message. With Rule-Based Dynamic Content, you can take this further by changing everything from the body text to images, subject lines, and even preheaders, using what you know about them in Data Cloud.

How much does Marketing Cloud Account Engagement+ cost? 

Here is a glance:

• Growth: $1,250 USD/per month up to 10,000 contacts

• Plus: $2,750 USD/per month up to 10,000 contacts

• Advanced: $4,400 USD/per month up to 10,000 contacts

• Premium: $15,000 USD/per month up to 75,000 contacts

Check out the detailed pricing page.

Marketing Cloud Intelligence+

With Intelligence+, you can keep your current MCI setup without any interruptions. You will also have the chance to explore new ideas in Marketing Intelligence.

Intelligent customers will get access to these features:

• Agentforce Paid Media Optimization. Monitor and automatically improve cross-channel campaigns 24/7 to reduce manual work.

• Segment Intelligence. Look at audience insights by campaign, channel, and goal to improve campaign performance. It is a significant benefit for customers using Data Cloud for targeting.

• Flexible Attribution (GA October 2025). Measure performance using any custom object, not just the first and last touch points.

How much does Marketing Cloud Intelligence+ cost?

Here’s a glance:

• Marketing Intelligence+ Growth starting at $11,000/month

• MC Intelligence+ Plus starting at $33,000/month

Check out the detailed pricing page.

Marketing Cloud Personalization+

With Personalization+, you can keep using your current Marketing Cloud Personalization setup without any interruptions. At the same time, you'll have the chance to explore and use new features in Salesforce Personalization.  

Personalized customers will get access to these features:

• Agentforce Web Curation: Customize a person's online experience based on their real-time conversations.

• Personalization Decisioning: Use Agentforce to provide real-time recommendations for products and content.

• AI Recommenders: Boost your performance with product and content recommendations tailored to your business goals.

• Custom Attribution: Set your personalization goals and measure their impact on your business.

How much does Personalization+ cost?

Here’s a glance:

• Personalization+ edition: starts at $15,000 per org per month. 

Check out the detailed pricing page.

Next-gen Marketing Cloud: Looking ahead 

This new era of two-way conversations led by intelligent AI offers excellent opportunities for businesses. You can connect departments, engage customers across various channels, and optimize marketing around the clock. This idea has been developing for a few years, and the technology is now ready to make it a reality. 

If you need help or more information, please contact Codleo. We're excited about the strong foundation we’ve built and look forward to seeing great connected experiences from our customers.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next (vs. MCE, MCAE, MCG, MCA)

Marketing Cloud Next was announced at Connections ‘25 in a big way. However, with many changes to Salesforce's marketing products over the past few years—such as rebranding and new editions—this launch might have confused some people.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Product Overview

Let's begin by clearly defining these products, explaining what they do, and their background. 

• Marketing Cloud Engagement (MCE): MCE, formerly known as ExactTarget, has been Salesforce's primary customer marketing tool for over 10 years. Since its acquisition, MCE has operated on its own system. It includes various features and tools that help segment audiences, automate tasks, and communicate across different channels.

• Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE): MCAE, formerly known as Pardot, has been Salesforce's primary marketing tool for businesses for over 10 years. It works closely with Salesforce's sales objects, such as leads, contacts, and opportunities. Even though MCAE was acquired, it is slowly aligning with Salesforce by using the same objects. A clear example of this is the campaign object. 

• Marketing Cloud Growth (MCG): In 2024, we launched the first version of “Marketing Cloud on core.” 

• Marketing Cloud Advanced (MCA): MCA was announced at Dreamforce '24, right after MCG. MCA offers more features than MCG.

• Marketing Cloud Next (MCN): Salesforce has created a new personalization engine as part of its efforts to unify its products. This engine is built on Data Cloud and allows for better use of agent activity across all Salesforce products, not just in marketing.

What's New in Marketing Cloud Next?  

After a series of new editions and many improvements in each release, the launch of MCN may have confused some people. 

At Connections ‘25, we announced Marketing Cloud Next. This collection of tools includes Agentforce Campaign Creation, Agentforce Lead Management, and Agentforce Segment Intelligence.

You might be wondering why this is new, especially if you know about the Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced editions. In simple terms, Marketing Cloud Next represents a new era of marketing on Salesforce in three key areas.   

• Combining: Salesforce has bought many companies in marketing technology and customer data over the years. Marketing Cloud Next brings together nine of these top acquisitions. 

• Rebuilding: Marketing Cloud Next is built on Data Cloud, also known as the ‘core platform.’ Salesforce has updated its personalization engine to work with Data Cloud. It means that all Salesforce products, such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Commerce Cloud, now share a single service.

• Simplifying: In the past, the “Marketing Cloud” offered a variety of services. Now, Marketing Cloud Next supports both B2B and B2C models in a single application. Salesforce aims to lower costs by minimizing the need for integrations within its marketing tools and with other platform products. 

When Everything Comes Together

Salesforce has been working on creating a single marketing app for several years. To help existing customers transition to the new editions with enhanced features, Salesforce has developed ‘pathways’ for easier adoption of Marketing Cloud ‘on core.’ MCG, MCA, and MCE+ serve as ‘stepping stones,’ allowing the use of two editions at the same time, which could lead us to the future of Marketing Cloud.

The 'on core' editions now have the same features and even more. It is a good step towards building a strong system that supports AI agents and provides a complete view of the customer for all teams in your organization.

We could summarize the timeline as follows: 

• MCAE → MCG or MCA: Salesforce made MCG and MCA available for Account Engagement customers in the middle of 2024, based on your MCAE edition. 

• MCE → MCE+: Marketing Cloud Engagement+ will be available in October 2025. 

Salesforce wants to clarify that what’s happening isn't a migration but a convergence. It means your previous investments in automation and segments created in Data Cloud can be used in Marketing Cloud Next. 

“Keep what works and add what is next.” 

The potential for MCE and MCN to work together can be shown in the diagram below. Currently, you can link Journey Builder journeys with Flow. It means you can create your messaging and flows and use existing Journey Builder journeys.

The connection between MCE and MCN is unclear in some parts of the marketing process, especially regarding content such as email templates, images, and files. This connection is currently available for MCAE to MCG/MCA. Salesforce is working on making the transition from the ExactTarget platform to the core platform smoother for MCE to MCN.

Imagining the Future Ahead

Years have passed since Salesforce began showing its goal of creating a unified marketing solution for both B2C and B2B, so you won’t have to choose between them. Marketing Cloud Next has impressively introduced this new technology. 

What does the future hold? The key idea is ‘convergence.’ Salesforce strongly believes in this concept and will not end its MCE/MCAE products—likely never. It is essential in the MCE area because many large companies have integrated their marketing operations into the platform. It makes it difficult to move everything elsewhere. 

Overall, it’s an exciting time to be a marketer on the Salesforce platform, and any skilled, adaptable marketer welcomes a challenge!

Summary

Marketing Cloud Next offers more than just the old features found in Salesforce's marketing tools. It serves both B2B and B2C businesses and has a new personalization engine. The goal is to reduce the need for integrations. With a unified view of the customer, all departments can access the same analytics. It means there is no more confusion about whether everyone is using the same data.

Marketing Cloud Next is a promising platform to watch. Salesforce has shared its vision for Marketing Cloud's future, which will likely lead to increased adoption and faster development of user-friendly features, backed by a strong support system.

If you’re curious about Marketing Cloud Next and how agentic AI can actually work for your business, let Codleo guide you. Our team helps you pick the right edition, set up Agentforce campaigns, and connect Data Cloud so your marketing feels more personal and less manual. Talk to Codleo today and turn those old do‑not‑reply messages into real, two-way customer conversations with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next.