Discover Marketing Cloud Next Channels in Action
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify the different marketing channels available in Marketing Cloud Next.
- Explain the actions and capabilities within each channel.
- Provide real-world use cases for specific and mixed-channel campaigns.
Meet the Marketing Cloud Next Channels
Marketing Cloud Next enables you to reach your audience exactly where they prefer to engage, without the friction of jumping between different vendor platforms. Because all of these channels operate on top of Data 360, every interaction a customer has immediately informs the next action across all other channels. Let’s explore the primary channels and how you can use them to build incredible experiences.
Email remains a cornerstone of digital marketing, but Marketing Cloud Next supercharges it by removing the boundary between CRM data and marketing execution. You can build highly dynamic, responsive emails by using the native builder directly on the Salesforce Platform.
Marketers can design beautiful and responsive templates by using a drag-and-drop interface. More importantly, you can inject rule-based dynamic content—such as automatically changing hero images, promotional text, and subject lines—based on a user's purchase history stored in Data 360. Furthermore, you can use Agentforce to automatically draft compelling subject lines and preheaders, analyze the tone of your copy, and even generate entire email body drafts based on your campaign briefs.
Short Message Service
When you need to get a critical message to a customer immediately, SMS is the ultimate channel. Text messages boast incredibly high open rates and immediate visibility, making them perfect for timely communications.
With SMS, you can send time-sensitive alerts, flash promotional offers, and event reminders. Unlike traditional batch SMS, in Marketing Cloud Next you can trigger these text messages automatically based on specific customer behaviors or real-time data changes in your CRM. You can also set up keyword responses. For example, if a customer texts JOIN, the system can automatically update their consent status in Data 360 and trigger a welcome message back to their device.
Mobile App Messaging
If your brand has a mobile app, this channel is critical for driving retention and engagement. Unlike SMS, which relies on phone networks, Mobile App Messaging leverages your own application to communicate directly with users.
- Push notifications: Send messages to a user's device even when they aren't using your app. These are perfect for re-engagement with messages like, “Your cart is still waiting for you” or “Breaking news: Market just closed.” You can create basic notifications or rich notifications that include images, buttons, and carousels.
- In-app messaging: Display targeted messages while the user is active inside your application. These are ideal for guiding user behavior. For example, a popup tutorial on a new feature or a specialized offer that appears only when a user visits a specific product screen.
Consumers increasingly rely on modern, rich-media messaging apps to communicate with friends, family, and brands. Marketing Cloud Next takes messaging a massive step further with Conversational Marketing for WhatsApp. Conversational Marketing is also available for SMS and email.
You can use WhatsApp to move far beyond standard, one-way text blasts. You can turn outbound promotional messages into dynamic, two-way conversations. You can design rich message templates that include images, videos, documents, and interactive buttons. For instance, if a customer replies to a promotional WhatsApp message by clicking a Tell Me More button on a product promotion, the thread can seamlessly transition to an AI-powered agent or a live service rep. Both the AI agent and service rep can handle self-service transactions, like booking appointments, modifying orders, or answering complex product questions, all within the exact same WhatsApp thread.
Web and Landing Pages
Your website is your ultimate digital storefront, and capturing data effectively here is critical. Marketing Cloud Next utilizes the robust, proven Experience Cloud technology to help you build and track landing pages directly on the core platform.
You can create personalized landing pages, launch specific campaign sites, capture lead data through seamlessly integrated forms, and track in-depth website engagement. Every single page view, link click, and form submission feeds directly into the Website Engagement data model in Data 360 in real-time. This instantly enriches the customer's unified profile, allowing your sales team to see exactly which product pages a prospect was looking at just moments before a sales call.
Use Cases: Channels in Action
Let’s explore how you can deploy these channels separately or combine them together to deliver great customer experiences.
Single Channel Use Case: The VIP Early Access Email
A high-end retail brand wants to reward its top-tier loyalty members with early access to an exclusive winter collection. Using Data 360, the marketing team instantly creates a precise segment of users who have a high lifetime value and have purchased winter gear in the past two years. Rather than writing the copy from scratch, they use Agentforce to draft a highly personalized email campaign. The email uses dynamic content blocks to showcase specific products from the exact category each member browses most frequently on the website. Because the data is unified, the moment the email is deployed, the sales and service teams can see that the customer received the VIP offer right on the customer's contact record.
Mixed Channel Use Case: The Cross-Departmental Post-Purchase Journey
Imagine a scenario where a customer buys a high-end smart TV online. To provide a world-class experience, the brand uses multiple channels to orchestrate the process seamlessly.
- Email: Immediately after checkout, the customer receives a beautifully branded order confirmation email containing their receipt, shipping timeline, and a dynamic link to the TV’s specific user manual.
- Mobile push notification: The next day, the brand's mobile app sends a push notification: “Your TV has shipped! Track it now.” Tapping the notification opens the app directly to the tracking page.
- SMS: Two days later, a segment-triggered flow detects that the shipping status in the CRM has changed to "Out for delivery." It automatically sends a brief SMS letting the customer know the TV will arrive by 5 PM.
- WhatsApp: A week after the successful delivery, a Flow triggers a WhatsApp message asking, “Hi! It looks like your new TV arrived last week. Do you need any help setting it up or connecting your devices?” The customer replies “YES, how do I connect my soundbar?” This two-way conversation is instantly routed to an Agentforce Service agent who views the customer's full profile and assists them in real-time. This dramatically boosts customer satisfaction, drives brand loyalty, and significantly reduces expensive product return rates.
- Mobile in-app message: Once the customer successfully sets up their soundbar, the next time they open the brand’s mobile app, a targeted in-app message appears. It displays their updated loyalty point balance from the TV purchase and offers a one-click Redeem Now button for a discount on their next accessory. This ensures the customer is aware of their rewards while they are actively engaged with the brand's app.
Impressive, isn’t it? By combining these channels together on a single platform, you eliminate friction, break down departmental silos, and create truly cohesive experiences that customers love.
What’s Next
In this unit, you learned about the various Marketing Cloud Next channels. You also got an overview of the single channel and mixed channel use cases. In the next unit, dive deep into where to find the setup, builder, and reporting tools on the core platform, and explore crucial global compliance considerations.