What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next?
Marketing Cloud Next is the rebuilt version of the Salesforce marketing platform, announced at Salesforce Connections in June 2025. Unlike legacy Marketing Cloud Engagement (formerly ExactTarget), Marketing Cloud Next is built natively on the core Salesforce platform using Data Cloud as its foundation. The result is a single unified marketing application that replaces nine separate acquisitions.
For LATAM companies that have struggled with the complexity of legacy Marketing Cloud Engagement, Marketing Cloud Next represents a significant simplification: one platform, one data model, one AI layer.
Key difference from legacy Marketing Cloud Engagement
- Legacy Marketing Cloud Engagement ran on ExactTarget's separate infrastructure, disconnected from core Salesforce CRM data.
- Marketing Cloud Next lives inside Salesforce alongside Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, sharing the same unified customer profile from Data Cloud.
- No more syncing contacts between systems. No duplicate data. One source of truth for marketing and sales.
Key features of Marketing Cloud Next
Agentforce-native marketing agents
Marketing Cloud Next ships with Agentforce agents built for marketing. An AI agent can autonomously create audience segments, recommend the next best action per customer, draft campaign copy, schedule sends, and report on performance, all without manual configuration. These agents are wired directly into your CRM and Data Cloud data.
Conversational Email
Customers can reply to emails and an Agentforce agent responds in context, answering product questions, resolving service issues, or progressing the customer toward a purchase. High-intent replies are automatically flagged for the sales team.
Unified B2B and B2C marketing
Historically, Salesforce required two separate platforms: Marketing Cloud Engagement for B2C and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) for B2B. Marketing Cloud Next eliminates this split. A single platform handles lead nurturing, account-based marketing, consumer journeys, and lifecycle campaigns, all from one unified customer profile.
Smarter Journey Orchestration in Flow
Journey orchestration is now built on Salesforce Flow, enabling no-code journey building with intelligent routing. Agents dynamically determine the next best journey for each individual based on real-time behavior, profile data, and intent signals.
Business Unit partitioning (Spring '26)
A long-awaited enterprise feature: the ability to partition marketing data and assets across multiple business units. This removes a major blocker for regional and multi-brand companies in LATAM operating across multiple markets.
Who should migrate to Marketing Cloud Next?
- New Salesforce customers starting a marketing implementation in 2025-2026 should start with Marketing Cloud Next directly.
- Existing Marketing Cloud Engagement customers with complex AMPscript templates should wait for migration tools. AMPscript is not supported in Marketing Cloud Next and manual rebuilds are time-consuming.
- Companies on Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) doing B2B marketing should evaluate Marketing Cloud Next as a consolidation opportunity.
- LATAM companies with multi-country, multi-brand operations will benefit most from the Spring '26 Business Unit partitioning feature.
Salesforce's position: The transition from legacy Marketing Cloud Engagement to Marketing Cloud Next is a "convergence," not a forced migration. Both systems can run in parallel while teams adopt Marketing Cloud Next capabilities incrementally.
Marketing Cloud Next for LATAM companies
Most mid-market companies in LATAM never fully leveraged legacy Marketing Cloud Engagement because of its complexity and cost. Marketing Cloud Next changes that equation: it integrates immediately with existing Sales or Service Cloud orgs, scales from small campaign teams to enterprise marketing operations, and comes with native Spanish and Portuguese language support.
How Zarasa can help
Zarasa implements and migrates Salesforce marketing platforms for companies across LATAM. We assess your current setup, define the right migration path to Marketing Cloud Next, and deploy in phases that minimize disruption to active campaigns.
Explore Marketing Cloud Next for your team
We will review your current marketing stack and show you what Marketing Cloud Next would look like for your business.
Get in touchFAQ
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next?
Marketing Cloud Next is the reimagined Salesforce marketing platform that replaces nine legacy tools with a single unified platform built natively on Data Cloud. It combines email, mobile, advertising, journeys, and AI into one product with real-time data at its core.
What is the difference between Marketing Cloud Next and Marketing Cloud Engagement?
Marketing Cloud Engagement was a collection of separate tools requiring complex integrations. Marketing Cloud Next is a ground-up rebuild on Data Cloud — natively unified, with real-time segmentation, AI-driven decisions, and no ETL pipelines required.
Should companies in LATAM migrate to Marketing Cloud Next?
Companies relying heavily on email and journey automation should plan their migration. Salesforce has set a roadmap for sunsetting legacy tools. LATAM companies with existing Marketing Cloud Engagement setups should assess migration complexity with a certified partner before 2027.