Since the announcement of Marketing Cloud Growth Edition on February 20th, we’ve been digging into the features of this new product as well as listening closely to the community’s questions about Marketing Cloud (Growth and Advanced Edition). We’ve compiled the most common questions from Salesforce webinars, Slack communities, our internal team, and our clients to get all your Marketing Cloud questions answered in one place.
NOTE: This blog post was updated in May 2025 to reflect new release features and product updates.
Answers to all of your Marketing Cloud questions
Here’s a list of the most common questions we’ve seen.
Wait, what is the “official” name
So, this product was originally launched as “Marketing Cloud Growth Edition”. A few months later Advanced Edition was released and the product evolved to “Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced Edition”. However, this was later shortened to just “Marketing Cloud”. Now I know “Marketing Cloud” means “Marketing Cloud Engagement” to a large portion of the community so I also refer to this tool as “Marketing Cloud on Core” so no one assumes I mean “Engagement”.
What is Marketing Cloud (on Core)?
Marketing Cloud is a new marketing automation platform from Salesforce. Marketing Cloud is built on the Salesforce Platform (aka “on Core”) and allows you to build multi-channel campaigns with Data Cloud, personalize marketing assets with Experience Cloud, and automate journeys with Flow. Marketing Cloud also includes Einstein and Agentforce capabilities throughout the platform as well as out-of-the-box content approval processes.
Is Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and/or Engagement being retired?
This is the most common question we’ve heard so far and the resounding answer is No, Engagement and Account Engagement are not being retired. Marketing Cloud is another option for organizations that want to bring their marketing operations into Salesforce. Engagement and Account Engagement will continue to have their own robust product roadmaps.
Which Salesforce Editions does Marketing Cloud work with?
Currently, Marketing Cloud works with Salesforce Enterprise Edition (EE) and Unlimited Edition (UE).
Is this the direction the Marketing Cloud Platform is going? All bundled within Core?
Yes, building Marketing Cloud’s foundation on core allows Marketers to get full access to customer data across the CRM and other clouds connected to the Salesforce platform. Breaking down data silos and uniting your data on one platform also allows Marketers to better leverage Einstein’s AI functionality as well as personalize every step of the customer journey.
Can Marketing Cloud be purchased without Data Cloud?
Marketing Cloud requires Data Cloud. If you do not yet have Data Cloud, check if you’re eligible for the Free Data Cloud SKU or Salesforce Foundations.
What is included out of the box with Marketing Cloud?
This is subject to change as the platform changes and grows but, as of May 2025 Growth Edition includes:
See our previous blog post for more information on the credit consumption model of Marketing Cloud.
Does Marketing Cloud consume super messages for email and SMS?
Marketing Cloud has different entitlements, emails and SMS do not consume super messages.
Do users need Salesforce licenses to access Marketing Cloud?
Currently users do need Salesforce licenses to access Marketing Cloud, but support for Identity Licenses is expected in the Summer ‘25 release (June).
Can clients with their own Data Warehouses use Marketing Cloud?
Yes, Marketing Cloud is built on top of Data Cloud, which means they can connect to your data wherever it lives.
What is the setup of Marketing Cloud like?
Setup for Marketing Cloud is being streamlined with each new release. Users with the Marketing Cloud Admin permission set can access the setup assistant for easier implementation of Marketing Cloud. Use the setup assistant to install or update all the required data marketing kits.
Is the intention to have customers self implement Marketing Cloud and do everything themselves?
The intention is to reduce the amount of energy spent on behalf of the customer to get to where they need consultants. Simply put, Marketing Cloud has very good defaults and a streamlined setup process, but there is still value to be added by consultants. If you’d like support setting up or optimizing Marketing Cloud, send us a message.
Can you configure marketing asset branding/brand standards within Marketing Cloud?
Yes! Users can create Brand Guidelines within Marketing Cloud that allow you to specify brand colors, typography, button styling, margins, and borders that can be applied to your marketing assets. If your brand standards are later updated, any marketing assets using that brand will also be updated. You can have multiple brand guidelines and also set a default Brand for your CMS Workspace so any new assets that are created for Marketing Cloud will be automatically branded.
Does Marketing Cloud use a different Flow than the Salesforce Admin Flow?
Marketing Cloud uses the same Flow that users would have access to when building a backend, or admin, Flow. However, the elements and processes that the Marketing Cloud Flow has access to are limited by permission sets. Out of the box, the Marketing Cloud Flow is tailored elements and actions that focus on automating Marketing Campaigns and Marketing processes. Additional Permissions can be added or removed to custom tailor what users can do within the Marketing Cloud Flow. In short, Salesforce Admins are not giving Marketers full Flow functionality by granting them access to the Marketing Cloud Flow Builder.
What scoring features are included with Marketing Cloud?
Marketing Cloud has both People and Account Scoring.
- People Scoring
- Engagement Score: Adds or removes points based on how engaged a person is with your Marketing initiatives.
- Fit Score: Similar to Account Engagement Grading, Fit Scoring tells Marketing and Sales how closely the prospect and their company aligns with the ideal client persona.
- Account Scoring
- Engagement Score: Aggregates how engaged Contacts associated with the Account are with your Marketing initiatives.
- Fit Scoring: How closely the Account matches your ideal customer.
- Intent Score: Optional AI driven scoring that measure how likely an Account is to make a purchase.
What Einstein features are included with Marketing Cloud?
This is another area that is growing and changing with each release, but at of May 2025, Marketing Cloud includes:
- Agentforce: Assists in building campaign briefs and campaign assets as well as generates copy for subject lines, preheaders, and body copy.
- Einstein Metrics Guard: Uses predictive AI to filter bot activity from your org’s engagement metrics
- Einstein Send Time Optimization: Send messages to your customers when they’re most likely to engage.
- Einstein Segment Creation: Assists in building Data Cloud segments from natural language prompts.
Three additional Einstein features are available in Advanced Edition:
- Campaign Designer (currently Beta): Assists in crafting campaign flows based on campaign objectives.
- Einstein Engagement Frequency: Uses Predictive AI to determine how frequently to contact customers and improve the likelihood of engagement.
- Einstein Engagement Scoring: Uses predictive AI to assign individual contact-level scores and determine the most efficient way to message recipients to increase customer engagement.
Does Marketing Cloud include Campaign Influence models?
Marketing Cloud has Opportunity Influence rather than Campaign Influence. Opportunity Influence assists marketers in identifying which campaigns were impactful for opportunities but relies on engagement rather than Campaign membership.
Can Marketing Cloud personalize messages based upon the individual record?
Yes, any fields connected to the Unified Individual can be used for personalization, this allows Marketers to even pull in data from other objects for cross object personalization. Dynamic Content is also available for use in email subject lines, email preheaders, and email components.
Does Data Cloud segment creation mean that SQL Queries will become a thing of the past?
Eventually, Salesforce is moving in the direction of clicks-not-code. Marketing Cloud includes prompts to help marketers build the appropriate filters in the segmentation builder, but you can also start from scratch within the builder.
Will SMS have the same process around provisioning and approvals as MC Engagement?
There are two SMS code options available in Marketing Cloud, Short Code and Long Code. The short code option follows the same provisioning process that exists today for Marketing Cloud Engagement today. Check out our blog post for more information on the Short vs Long code and the provisioning processes.
Does Marketing Cloud include A/B Testing capabilities?
Yes! Except it is called Path Experiment and it does even more than simple A/B Testing. Take a look at our blog post on Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition for more info on this feature.
How does Marketing Cloud handle pre-lead, unassigned records?
Salesforce introduced a new CRM Object for Prospects as part of the Spring ‘26 release. This new object can be used to store pre-lead records in CRM, similar to how Account Engagement keeps Prospects within its system and only sends Prospects to Salesforce when they are Sales/Lead ready.
How can Account Engagement and Engagement Customers start using Marketing Cloud?
Account Engagement Customers get access to Marketing Cloud as part of their current contract. Check out our blog post for more details.
Marketing Cloud Engagement customers will get a similar provisioning path soon (Safe Harbor!)
How has Sercante been involved in the launch of Marketing Cloud?
Members of the Sercante team have been involved with Marketing Cloud since the pilot in 2023. We were also members of the Pioneer Program at launch in 2024 and have over 30 customers using Marketing Cloud today. We were also the first partner to be provisioned a Marketing Cloud Growth Edition Partner Org so we could provide feedback, documentation help, and FAQs to the development team.
Learn more about Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
Want to learn more about Marketing Cloud Growth Edition? Check out some of our previous blog posts and subscribe to The Spot so you stay in the loop as we dive deeper into this new product.
- Announcing Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
- Announcing Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition
- Smarter, Stronger Marketing with Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud on Core
Send Sercante a message if you still have questions that aren’t on the Marketing Cloud Growth Edition FAQ list.
