Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a platform designed to help teams build and automate marketing efforts across a range of channels, such as email and SMS. Within Marketing Cloud, there's a few different products.

Formerly ExactTarget, Salesforce acquired Marketing Cloud Engagement in 2013.

With Marketing Cloud Engagement, teams can use products like Journey Builder and Email Studio to create content, segment their audience, and send personalized emails across a variety of channels.

Marketing Cloud Engagement sits outside the Salesforce core platform and connects to CRM through Marketing Cloud Connect.

Shortly before Salesforce acquired ExactTarget, ExactTarget acquired Pardot. In 2022, Salesforce renamed Pardot to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.

With Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, teams can build account-based marketing strategies and track prospect engagement across the whole lifecycle of a deal, helping the Sales team close opportunities.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement sits outside the Salesforce core platform and connects to CRM through the Account Engagement Connector.

In June 2025, Salesforce announced Marketing Cloud Next. It’s available in two editions, Growth and Advanced. Between October 2025 and September 2026, Salesforce also called it Agentforce Marketing.

With Marketing Cloud Next, teams can use AI agents to create campaigns, personalize content, and manage two-way conversations with customers across email, SMS, web, and WhatsApp.

Marketing Cloud Next is built on the Salesforce core platform and uses Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud). It works alongside Marketing Cloud Engagement and Account Engagement, so teams don’t need to replace their existing setup.