What You Can Learn From Two Marketing Cloud Next Onboarding Journeys

There isn’t a single path to agentic marketing success — it’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure. Some teams want to preserve what’s already working and layer in new capabilities gradually. Others are ready to build something new from the ground up. Both approaches can work. The key is knowing which one fits where you are today.

We asked two Salesforce customers to share their firsthand journeys adopting Marketing Cloud Next. Matt Patston from Rawlings Sporting Goods took the gradual path, keeping his existing Marketing Cloud Engagement workflows intact while incrementally adding new capabilities. Josh Grace from Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) went all in with an accelerated adoption, implementing Marketing Cloud Next without a partner, right in the middle of summer. 

Here’s what their experiences can teach you — including 5 actionable tips you can take into your own journey, no matter where you’re starting from.

Rawlings Sporting Goods: From “blast everyone” to real-time personalization

The before state

Matt Patston, Senior Content Manager at Rawlings Sporting Goods, described a situation many marketers know too well: a full email list, a handful of topics and a “send to everyone” strategy. Over time, Patston’s team improved — better segmentation, more personalized content — but they hit a ceiling.

“The data wasn’t real-time,” he said. “Segmentation required a lot of SQL, a lot of automation I didn’t know how to write, and it just wasn’t sustainable.”

The shift

After connecting their website data through Data 360, everything changed. Rawlings had transaction data before, but it was a daily file drop. Now it’s real time. Their subscriber base is connected to on-site engagement. And complex segmentation that used to take hours? Patston can now do it in Flow in a few clicks.

The setup: build and configure the journey in Marketing Cloud Engagement as usual, use it as an API entry point then go into Marketing Cloud Next to build the audience and Flow. It’s a familiar set of tools, but with more power than ever.

What it unlocked

The results were immediate and concrete. Campaign build time dropped from 3 hours to 45 minutes — a 75% reduction — using Data 360 segments and Flow automation. Questions that used to take hours to answer, like “how many new subscribers do we have this year?”, now take a few clicks. 

And real-time personalization, once entirely out of reach, is now live: Rawlings delivers immediate, personalized follow-ups based on browsing and cart behavior, with ML-powered product recommendations already driving higher email CTR in abandoned cart campaigns.

But perhaps the bigger shift was in how Patston’s team thinks about what’s possible. “Roughly 80% of our workflows are now automated through Agentforce, with about 20% still manual — and the feedback loop is so much faster,” he said. “If I had to put a number on the efficiency gain, I’d say around 50%.”

Indiana Wesleyan University: Going all-in (without a playbook)

The bold move

Josh Grace, Executive Director of Enrollment Technology at Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU), and his team of Salesforce admins implemented Marketing Cloud Next themselves — no partner leading the way, and right in the middle of summer.

What it unlocked

The platform didn’t just improve their marketing. It developed their people. One team member built out IWU’s internal asset library entirely on his own — and gained enough confidence from the experience to launch his own nonprofit consulting practice on the side. He became what Grace calls “a 10x player”: using Agentforce and the connections the team established, he can now accomplish in minutes what used to take days.

The speed gains were real too. Agentforce Marketing accelerated campaign creation at IWU by roughly 40%, and with less reliance on SQL, the team finally has confidence in its ability to iterate quickly and keep up with new ideas.

But perhaps just as meaningful: when a new Salesforce release dropped in the middle of the Connections session, one of IWU’s admins immediately mapped out all the implications for their end users and provided feedback on their current instance.

That kind of proactive, confident thinking — from a team that once implemented Marketing Cloud Next without a partner, without documentation, over a summer — is the real unlock.

5 Actionable tips for marketers starting this journey

1. Start with what you already have. Patson’s approach to Data 360 was to replicate his existing Marketing Cloud Engagement segments first and then expand. Don’t try to reinvent everything at once.

2. Use standard data model objects — don’t customize out of the gate. Patston learned this the hard way: “When you start your Data 360 journey, it’s really tempting to create a bunch of custom data model objects and just load your stuff in there,” he said. “Do not do that. I tried it and had to undo all of it.” Stick to standard objects as much as possible rather than creating custom objects. 

He added: “I found that the more complex the data model got, the harder it was to keep track of what the relationships were supposed to be between various custom objects, or what functions they were supposed to serve. Sticking to the standard object — even if you have to add some custom fields to accommodate your own data — allows you to build and use the documented data relationships much easier/faster, which helps with understanding how to approach things like segment-building, calculated insights.”

3. Jump into Data 360 now — even if it’s hard. Grace originally wanted to super fast-track their implementation of Data 360 and all of the features and tools related to it. Their original vision was to minimize their time and effort in Data 360. But, they soon realized that knowledge gained working in the foundational data model made their marketing efforts more efficient, more accurate and more scalable. This knowledge compounds; it pays off across every integration and platform you use.

4. Get executive buy-in before you experiment. Make sure leadership is on board and you have room to make mistakes. “Approaching this holistically and showing leadership the results you can get, while being honest that it’s an ongoing investment, is the right move,” Grace said.

5. Don’t let the technical surface area intimidate you. Patston’s parting message: “If you know how to use Salesforce, you can figure this out. It’s not totally inaccessible for marketers, and it’s getting better and better.” The hardest part is often the mindset shift — not the platform itself.

Supercharging Your Future Path

Rawlings and IWU blazed the Agentforce Marketing trail early — and their stories show what’s possible when teams commit to the journey. And the good news? Salesforce is making both paths even easier.

• Agentic Segmentation: Build segments using natural language instead of SQL. No technical expertise required.
• Agent for Campaign Building: An agent that helps you decide the channel, build the segment, review it, and launch — end to end.
• Agent-Powered Reporting: Ask an agent how a campaign is performing and get an answer instantly.
• Credit guardrails: Set spending limits per campaign so you can experiment without blowing your budget.

Whether you go gradual or accelerated, the message is clear: the window to get started is open now. The technology is maturing fast, the documentation is improving and the customers who move early are building real advantages — in efficiency, in data capability and in the skills of their own teams.

Pick your path. Start small if you need to. But the key is to start.