Why Salesforce Marketing Cloud on Core?

Solutions for Smarter Marketing

On June 19, 2025, I hosted a live webinar to help organizations understand how Salesforce Marketing Cloud on Core is streamlining omnichannel marketing. Geared toward nonprofits and small to medium-sized businesses, the session was designed to highlight how to do more with less, without sacrificing quality, personalization, or strategy.

The webinar began with a breakdown of three of Salesforce’s current marketing products. Salesforce also announced a new addition to the collection at Connections 2025, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next. While the Next variation of the platform is still being fine-tuned, we are focusing on these three currently available and known products. 

The webinar began with a breakdown of three of Salesforce’s main marketing products:

- Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) - MCAE is a B2B marketing automation platform that enables organizations to generate leads, nurture prospects, and align marketing and sales through targeted campaigns and analytics. First released in 2007, Pardot was acquired by ExactTarget shortly before both joined Salesforce in 2013. There are currently four tiers of access to MCAE: Growth, Pro, Advanced, and Premium.

- Marketing Cloud Engagement (formerly ExactTarget) - MCE is a robust B2C digital marketing platform designed to manage and automate personalized customer experiences across email, mobile, social, and advertising channels. First released in 2000, joined Salesforce in 2013. There are currently three tiers of access to MCE: Professional, Corporate, and Enterprise.

- Marketing Cloud Editions built on Core (Growth and Advanced Editions) - The MCG and MCA Editions offer an all-in-one marketing platform built natively on the Salesforce platform, offering integrated, data-driven, omnichannel campaign management designed for ease of use and scalability. Currently, there are four total Edition tiers: Starter Suite, Pro Suite, Growth, and Advanced. The first was released by Salesforce in 2024,

Click here to view or download a more complete breakdown of these three platforms. 

Each platform offers different strengths, but I delved deepest into Marketing Cloud on Core during the webinar. 

Marketing Cloud Editions on Core are offerings of the newer, native Salesforce marketing platform built on the Salesforce Core architecture. On Core is an informal term, used by Salesforce and the greater community to refer to products built on Data Cloud. Salesforce is currently identifying products built “on Core” as Editions (Growth and Advanced may be the most well-known), though the announced-at-Connections platform, Marketing Cloud Next, is also built on Core. These Editions are built directly into Salesforce, which is why they are called "on Core," and offer seamless integration with your CRM, a modern user interface, and centralized data management through Salesforce Data Cloud. In our webinar demo, linked below, I demonstrated how users can easily automate customer journeys and unify marketing data across SMS, email, social, and more, directly within the Core platform.

The first Marketing Cloud Edition built on Core launched in 2024. They are now available through four total subscription levels, two primary ones: Marketing Cloud Growth and Marketing Cloud Advanced. You may have heard these names used interchangeably, but they refer to specific tiers of the same platform.

• Marketing Cloud Growth: An entry-level subscription tier of Marketing Cloud on Core. It includes core features like email, SMS, basic AI personalization, and native integration with Salesforce.
• Marketing Cloud Advanced: The higher-tier subscription of Marketing Cloud on Core. It adds more advanced capabilities such as increased automation, enhanced AI tools, advanced segmentation, and expanded limits on channels and users.

Throughout the session, I emphasized the importance of using the right tools for the right job and walked through how Marketing Cloud on Core makes sophisticated marketing workflows accessible for teams with limited resources, a common issue according to the webinar’s poll results. 

Viewers also shared the platforms they are working with, and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement came up as the most commonly used tool in one of our polls. They were glad to learn that Salesforce recently announced Account Engagement customers can access Marketing Cloud Growth Edition as part of their current contract. Read more in this related blog post.

It’s also important to note that Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced require Data Cloud. For our nonprofit friends, if your organization doesn’t have Data Cloud yet, you may be eligible for the free Data Cloud SKU or Salesforce Foundations program. Talk to your Salesforce Account Engagement rep to find out more, or if you woud like help figuring it outMost viewers revealed that their marketing channels need to be integrated into a single source, which can be a time-consuming process but is well worth the effort to streamline into actionable information that allows for educated and timely decisions. Arkus Director of Data Services Steve Parrott addressed the issue of data integration in a Data Strategy blog post from earlier this year a great source for more information on building a strong data foundation. 

Watch the webinar below.

Viewer Questions

After our main demo session, I opened it up for a Q&A session  that was packed with great  discussion around questions from our audience:

• Will Salesforce be offering a nonprofit discount on Core?
• Do I need a developer to use Marketing Cloud (in general and on Core)?
• Do we need Data Cloud to take Advantage of Marketing Cloud on Core?
• Do we need Nonprofit Cloud, or does Marketing Cloud on Core work with NPSP?
• How secure is customer data within Marketing Cloud?

Skip to the end of the webinar video to hear our answers to these questions. 

Introduced at Connections 2025, Salesforce's newest marketing platform is Marketing Cloud Next (MCN), will continue the trend of Built on Core, which incorporates Agentforce and actionable data to help teams use shared data to personalize customer experiences and work more efficiently across the entire customer journey. Should Next become available as announced, we'll share more details in an upcoming blog post as more information becomes available.

Advancing Your Marketing Strategy with Salesforce

Salesforce offers an exceptional suite of marketing tools designed to drive your organization’s success, allowing clients to select the platform best tailored to their specific requirements and objectives. From sophisticated email campaigns to advanced analytics, Salesforce provides comprehensive solutions that seamlessly integrate with current operations and support future expansion. These tools are designed to optimize marketing endeavors, streamline workflows, and deliver measurable ROI through straightforward implementation, comprehensive training, and continuous support.

Are you ready to streamline your engagement strategy? The Arkus team is here to help you design scalable, effective solutions that align with your mission and maximize your use of Salesforce. Reach out through our contact form to start the conversation and learn how we can support your goals. Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our monthly newsletter in the sidebar for more demos, expert insights, product updates, and upcoming event announcements.