Marketing Cloud Next for SFMC pros: what carries over, and how to practise it

If MC Next feels intimidating, you're not alone

If you're reading this, there's a good chance Marketing Cloud Next feels a bit daunting right now. You've spent years getting good at SFMC. You know your way around data extensions, you can write AMPscript without looking it up, and you've built journeys that run every day. Then a brand-new platform arrives with new names, a new data model and a new syntax, and the first question in your head is: will any of what I know still count?

You're not the only one asking it. I hear it from SFMC pros in the community all the time, and I felt it myself the first time I opened MC Next. Learning a new tool is uncomfortable, especially when your career is built on the one you already know.

It's a fair question, and it has a clear answer. This guide walks through it step by step: what MC Next actually is, what carries over, what's new, and how to start practising before you even have an org.

What is Marketing Cloud Next?

Marketing Cloud Next (MC Next) is Salesforce's newer marketing platform. It's built on the core Salesforce platform and runs on Data 360, the product previously called Data Cloud. Audiences come from Data 360 segments, journeys are built as Flows, and emails are personalised with merge fields and Handlebars.

The naming doesn't help. Salesforce Marketing Cloud has been renamed more than once, Marketing Cloud Engagement among them, and it keeps changing. By the time you read this, it may have a new name again. Whatever it's called this month, it's the same core product, the one most of us learned on. Marketing Cloud Next is different. It's a genuinely new product with a different architecture, not another rename.

What carries over from SFMC, and what's new

If you've built emails, audiences and journeys in SFMC, you already understand the problems MC Next solves. The way you solve them is what changes.

The biggest shift is data retrieval. In SFMC, pulling a value into an email was the easy part and the work was in the logic. In MC Next the logic is familiar, but getting the right value out of the data graph is the genuinely new skill.

How SFMC translates into MC Next

Here's how the parts you use every day map across. Use it as a starting point: each one is the same job, done with a different tool.

Is AMPscript going away?

No. AMPscript still runs, and what you write in AMPscript compiles to Handlebars underneath. Handlebars is what MC Next writes and reads natively, which is why it's worth learning. But your AMPscript knowledge isn't wasted. It's the reason Handlebars will click faster for you than for someone starting from nothing.

Here's what that looks like. Drop a first name merge field into an MC Next email and the platform writes something like this for you:

{{fallback (get (get @root "$dataGraph") "ssot__FirstName__c") "there"}}

If you've ever written IIF(Empty(@firstName), "there", @firstName) in AMPscript, you already understand what that line is doing. It's a fallback around a value. Learning Handlebars starts with reading what the platform already wrote.

How to practise MC Next without an org

This is the question that stops most people. Even if you can get into an MC Next org, you can't write a single merge field until there's a data graph behind it. That means ingesting data, mapping data model objects, defining relationships and assembling the graph. It's days of setup before your first "Hi Marcus".

Here's how to get hands-on anyway:

• Use Trailhead for the concepts. Salesforce's free learning platform is the best place for the official terminology and how the pieces fit together.
• Practise the syntax somewhere safe. The Handlebars Lab (free for community members) gives you ready-made data graphs and customer records, so you can write merge fields and Handlebars and watch them render in your browser. No org, no setup.
• Get involved early at work. If your company is planning a move, ask to shadow the migration. Reading what's been built in SFMC is the first job of any migration, and that's work you can already do.

What to learn first

Start with the data, because everything in MC Next sits on top of it. Then personalise, then orchestrate. Each step builds on the one before it.

1. 1

   Data 360

   How customer data is ingested, modelled and unified around the unified individual, and how segments and data graphs are built from it.

2. 2

   Handlebars

   Merge fields first, then navigating the data graph, then logic, loops and formatting. This is where your AMPscript experience pays off.

3. 3

   Flows

   Rebuilding the journeys you know in Flow Builder. Same requirements and logic, new canvas.

AMPscript Academy covers the first two today, with the Data 360 program and Handlebars - The MC Next Email Developer's Handbook. Week 1 of each is free.

Should you still learn SFMC?

Yes. Thousands of companies run SFMC every day, and that's where most of the jobs still are. It's also the fastest way into MC Next work. Every migration starts by reading what was built in SFMC, and you can't rebuild what you can't read. The people who understand both platforms are the ones who lead those projects.

That's why AMPscript Academy is an SFMC community first. AMPscript, SQL and SSJS build the foundations. Data 360 and Handlebars carry them into MC Next.

Frequently asked questions