Marketing Cloud Next: A Glimpse into the Future of Customer Engagement

Exciting developments are on the horizon for those in the marketing world, especially those working with Marketing Cloud Engagement! Last week was Salesforce’s flagship marketing event in Chicago – Connections. We streamed the keynote and heard all about Marketing Cloud Next. Here are our key takeaways.

The keynote focused on how existing Marketing Cloud Engagement customers can access Marketing Cloud Next. It’s not a migration from the existing environment, but rather a synchronised system between MC Engagement and MC Next available from October 2025.

Marketing Cloud Next is being positioned as an all-in-one platform, designed to seamlessly support the entire customer journey and end ‘do-not-reply marketing’. My understanding is that this is an evolution of Marketing Cloud Growth & Advanced, but Salesforce have not explicitly covered how this announcement impacts these editions. Read the Salesforce announcement here.

Key Features and Focus Areas:

• Intelligence, Insights, and Orchestration: MC Next emphasises these three pillars, along with a focus on both B2C and B2B interactions.
• Two-Way Conversations: Moving beyond just sending messages, MC Next aims to facilitate real, two-way conversations with customers.
• Connecting the Ecosystem: MC Next aims to connect marketing to sales, service, and commerce, creating a unified experience.
• Agentforce: Agentforce can recommend flows and products based on customer profiles and behavior.

Technical Highlights:

• MC Engagement involves a “heavier lift” to bring the send engine and scripting onto Core.
• MC Intelligence / MC Personalization can be used with Data Cloud (DC) today.
• Marketing Cloud Intelligence will leverage Datorama on Data Cloud and work with Tableau.
• The MC Engagement  Journey Builder will feature a “flow backward” capability, offering more flexibility in campaign management.
• Flows in MC Next can be triggered by specific events, such as a journey goal being met, this will enable customers to “daisy-chain” journeys and flows together with just a few clicks, no coding required.
• MC Engagement & MC Next systems are designed to be synced, ensuring continuity. Account Engagement campaigns can already be synchronised with MC Next.

Practical Applications:

The example of the Indiana Pacers using data from 30 different sources to manage ticket demand showcased the power of Marketing Cloud. It acts as the “connective tissue” between various operators.

Looking Ahead:

• Journey Decisioning will be generally available (GA) in October, connecting the two platforms.
• MC Next will be available to current customers in July 2025.

Salesforce shared the 5 Steps to building your Next campaign:

1. 1. 1. Connect data to Data Cloud
      2. Personalise with Agentforce
      3. Unify loyalty promotions
      4. Manage consumption in Digital Wallet
      5. Bring Journeys into Flow

Overall, Marketing Cloud Next seems poised to offer a powerful, integrated platform for enhanced customer engagement. I’m looking forward to seeing these advancements unfold!