What is Marketing Cloud Next (Agentforce Marketing)? The Complete Guide for SMBs

• Target Audience: SMBs and B2B organisations seeking “on-core” automation.
• Foundation: Built natively on Data Cloud and Salesforce Flow.
• Pricing: Starting at $1,500/month (billed annually).
• Core Value: Eliminates data silos by housing CRM and Marketing in the same metadata layer without complex integrations.

More details about feature support and platform capabilities, including messaging platforms and future plans, are provided in the following sections. For a side-by-side comparison of editions and functionalities, refer to the comparative feature table included later in the article.
 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next Edition is designed for growing businesses that want to move beyond basic email tools without the complexity of enterprise stacks. Companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), can leverage Marketing Cloud Next to better segment and target audiences for more effective marketing efforts. It is especially suited for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with B2B or B2C use cases.

By using complete customer data, these companies can personalise campaigns and identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, enhancing customer engagement and driving growth.

Ease of Use & Integration

Marketing Cloud Next works with your existing Salesforce products and is designed to bring all your marketing efforts together in one place. User-friendly interfaces make it accessible for teams looking to scale their marketing without needing deep technical expertise.

It's a smooth transition for teams already familiar with the Salesforce Lightning experience. If you are currently using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), Marketing Cloud Next is the next step towards a more unified and data-driven future.

Centralised Customer View

Think of it as a central hub. Marketing Cloud next utilises the Unified Individual record in Data Cloud, the unified individual provides a unified view of your customer across sales, service, and marketing.

Marketing Cloud Next uses consolidated customer data which can be pulled from multiple sources, such as CRM, website, and mobile applications which eliminates data silos.

By leveraging unified data, businesses can create complete customer profiles for more accurate and complete segmentation. This allows SMBs to run personalised and tailored campaigns, connect with customers, and measure results effectively.

However, a unified view is only as valuable as the actions it enables. To turn that data into revenue, Marketing Cloud Next provides a lean but powerful toolkit designed to move prospects from discovery to advocacy.
 

1. Campaign Management

Campaign Management helps SMBs enhance their marketing without diving into complex coding. These tools simplify the process of engaging customers efficiently.

• Integrated Advertising Campaigns: Growth Edition supports integrated advertising campaigns across multiple channels, including two-way SMS, push notifications, and other advertising channels within a seamless workflow.
• Multi Channel Journeys: Build advanced multi-channel journeys for sophisticated, cross-channel customer engagement and improved personalisation.
• Right Time Messaging: Leverage AI and automation to deliver personalised messages at the right time, ensuring communications occur when they are most effective.
• Key Communication Channels: Growth Edition supports key communication channels like email, social, SMS, and web.
• Content Creation: Tools for creating professional emails, social media posts, and web content.
• Multi-Channel Campaign Management: Growth helps manage multi-channel campaigns, making it easy to handle them from one platform.
• Automation of Recurring Tasks: The platform automates recurring tasks, freeing up time for creativity and strategic planning.
• Real-Time Performance: Access near real-time analytics, empowering marketers to use customer feedback for responsive campaigns.
• Team Collaboration: Utilise tools for sharing and approving content within the platform.
• WhatsApp Integration: Reach your audience through critical communication channels natively.
• Cross-Channel Management: Optimise customer journeys across multiple touchpoints to maximise engagement.

2. Segmentation and Consent Management

Segmentation is pivotal for creating tailored strategies that resonate. Marketing Cloud Next makes this easy by allowing you to use:

• Attribute-Based Division: Divide audiences based on specific criteria, including customer preferences and behaviour, for targeted initiatives.
• Lead Scoring & Predictive Analysis: Use lead scoring and predictive analysis to identify and prioritise high-value prospects, optimising conversion rates.
• Advanced Segmentation & Predictive Capabilities: Benefit from advanced segmentation and predictive analysis capabilities provided by marketing cloud platforms.
• AI-Driven Automation: Leverage AI algorithms to automate customer segmentation, content creation, and campaign optimisation.
• Personalisation for Loyalty: Personalisation fosters customer loyalty by offering relevant content and tailored experiences.
• Natural Language Prompts: Use AI to build segments quickly with simple text commands.
• Prompt Translation: Automatically translate prompts into specific segment attributes for precision.
• Robust Consent Tools: Collect and manage consent across multiple channels (Email, SMS, WhatsApp) to ensure regulatory compliance.
• Subscription Management: Create communication subscriptions and employ consent checks before sending promotional messages.

3. Agentforce & Einstein AI: Predictive and Generative Marketing

AI is built into the forefront of the Growth Edition, empowering marketers to personalise messages through real-time data analysis and AI-driven personalisation that tailors content, offers, and recommendations in real-time to each customer. Agentforce Marketing automates marketing tasks for small businesses, enabling hyper-personalisation and cost-effective solutions.

• Actionable Insights: Use AI to display real-time performance data and machine learning for customer data analysis, helping to improve content quality and campaign effectiveness through data-driven insights and A/B testing.
• Automated Processes: Marketing clouds automate multi-step customer journeys across various channels, triggering actions based on specific interactions, such as abandoned carts or specific responses.
• Depth of Advanced Features: The platform offers depth in advanced AI-driven marketing features, enabling comprehensive analysis, customisation, and personalisation for complex strategies.
• Campaign Performance: AI agents in Agentforce can autonomously analyse and optimise in-flight campaign performance.
• Salesforce Flow: Streamline operations and optimise communication timing using Salesforce’s platform-wide automation tool.
• Generative Agents: AI agents can draft comprehensive campaign briefs, generate content, and monitor performance to suggest real-time optimisations. They can also automate the generation of email subject lines and landing pages for timely, relevant efforts.
  • Example: For example, AI can automate a multi-step customer journey by sending a personalised welcome email after signup, following up with a tailored product recommendation, and then offering a special discount if the customer has not made a purchase within a week.
     

If you’ve heard this platform referred to as Agentforce Marketing instead of Marketing Cloud Next, you aren’t alone.

Salesforce has been working towards a single marketing app vision for several years, leading to the creation of Marketing Cloud Next. The two names exist because of a significant strategic shift in how Salesforce brands its AI capabilities.

The Shift to Autonomous AI

While "Marketing Cloud Next" was the initial technical name for this "on-core" solution, Salesforce rebranded its broader AI initiative to Agentforce in late 2024. The name "Agentforce Marketing" highlights the platform's ability to move beyond simple automation and toward autonomous agents. This is AI that can reason, make decisions, and execute tasks across the campaign lifecycle without constant manual oversight.

Branding Alignment

Salesforce is aligning all its core products under the Agentforce umbrella (e.g., Agentforce Service, Agentforce Sales). Calling it Agentforce Marketing signals that this isn't just a minor update to the old Marketing Cloud. It is a completely different architecture built on the Einstein 1 Platform and Data Cloud. The Einstein Trust Layer ensures data privacy and security by masking sensitive information. While Data Cloud centralises all data within it.

"On-Core" vs. "Off-Core"

The name change also helps distinguish this new version from the legacy Marketing Cloud (formerly ExactTarget).

• Marketing Cloud Engagement/Account Engagement (Formerly Pardot): Often referred to as "off-core" because they require integrations to "talk" to your CRM.
• Agentforce Marketing (Next): Built "on-core," meaning it lives inside your Salesforce org. The "Agentforce" branding emphasises this native connectivity.

The Marketing Cloud Next Edition is a robust marketing automation solution designed to help businesses accelerate their growth and deepen customer engagement. Built on the Salesforce platform, this edition brings together essential marketing features in a single, easy-to-use tool. With the Growth Edition, you can manage your marketing campaigns from start to finish - leveraging unified data, automated flows, and AI-powered insights from Einstein.

Choosing between the Marketing Cloud Next Edition and the Advanced Edition depends on your business’s size, complexity, and marketing goals. The Growth Edition is tailored for SMBs seeking a straightforward, user-friendly marketing automation platform that covers all the essentials - multi-channel campaign management, automation, and AI-driven insights - without overwhelming complexity.

The Technical Edge: Data Cloud

While AI provides the "brain," Data Cloud provides the "memory." Marketing Cloud Next leverages Data Cloud to handle the heavy lifting of data management.

The Solution Junkie’s Take: The real win here is the elimination of data latency. Because it's native, a customer's action in a web store can trigger a marketing email in seconds, not hours.

Using Salesforce's Content Management System (CMS)

By utilising the integrated Salesforce CMS, your team eliminates "asset silos."

• Centralised Storage: Store marketing assets in one place to help teams stay organised.
• Platform-Wide Access: Pull assets directly into emails or forms, ensuring brand consistency.
• Seamless Implementation: Built-in integrations mean teams always have the tools at hand to produce effective materials.

Enhancing Customer Journeys with Experience Cloud

The integration of Marketing Cloud Next forms into Experience Cloud sites makes it easy to create a smooth customer journey.

• Embedded Forms: Build forms in Marketing Cloud and embed them directly into your sites to keep data connected.
• Engagement focus: Create high-conversion digital environments that feel like a natural extension of your brand.

Account Engagement Strategies for SMBs

Effective account engagement is at the heart of successful marketing for SMBs, and the Marketing Cloud Next Edition provides the tools needed to excel. By leveraging unified data and automated flows, you can create marketing campaigns that are both targeted and relevant to your audience.

Landing Pages and Content Creation

Landing pages and compelling content are crucial for converting prospects and engaging customers. The Marketing Cloud Next Edition equips SMBs with a suite of tools to create, manage, and optimise landing pages and marketing content - all within the Salesforce platform.
 

Because Marketing Cloud Next is built on Data Cloud, your analytics go beyond simple "clicks and opens."

• Real-Time Tracking: Monitor email, SMS, and landing page engagement as it happens.
• Pipeline Attribution: Connect marketing activities directly to your sales pipeline and ROI.
• Engagement Scores: Automatically highlight top leads for your sales team.
• Unified Dashboards: View campaign performance alongside sales data to understand the true impact of your marketing spend.

Future Developments and Roadmap

As the platform matures, Salesforce is focusing on deepening security and cross-departmental efficiency.

• Security & Compliance: Implementing data residency practices to meet local regulations.
• Workflow Improvements: Enhancing collaboration between various departments to streamline execution.

Take the Next Step

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next Edition is a powerful shift for SMBs. By combining Campaign Management, Einstein AI, and the power of Data Cloud, it offers a comprehensive solution for creating personalised omnichannel experiences that drive business growth.

Marketing Cloud Next is a powerful engine, but it’s only as good as the data fueling it. Download our Salesforce Data Cloud Readiness Checklist to see if your business is prepared to unlock the full potential of AI-driven marketing. Or if you're ready to launch a project, speak to our Salesforce consultants.