const{Fragment:e,jsx:n,jsxs:r}=arguments[0];function _createMdxContent(t){const i={a:"a",code:"code",em:"em",h2:"h2",li:"li",p:"p",pre:"pre",strong:"strong",ul:"ul",...t.components},{Accordion:a,AccordionContent:o,AccordionItem:s,AccordionTrigger:l,Callout:d,Card:c,CardContent:h,CardDescription:g,CardHeader:u,CardTitle:m,Feature:p,FeatureGrid:f,KeyTakeaways:w,Quote:y,Stat:b,StatGrid:v,Tabs:k,TabsContent:T,TabsList:x,TabsTrigger:C}=i;return a||_missingMdxReference("Accordion",!0),o||_missingMdxReference("AccordionContent",!0),s||_missingMdxReference("AccordionItem",!0),l||_missingMdxReference("AccordionTrigger",!0),d||_missingMdxReference("Callout",!0),c||_missingMdxReference("Card",!0),h||_missingMdxReference("CardContent",!0),g||_missingMdxReference("CardDescription",!0),u||_missingMdxReference("CardHeader",!0),m||_missingMdxReference("CardTitle",!0),p||_missingMdxReference("Feature",!0),f||_missingMdxReference("FeatureGrid",!0),w||_missingMdxReference("KeyTakeaways",!0),y||_missingMdxReference("Quote",!0),b||_missingMdxReference("Stat",!0),v||_missingMdxReference("StatGrid",!0),k||_missingMdxReference("Tabs",!0),T||_missingMdxReference("TabsContent",!0),x||_missingMdxReference("TabsList",!0),C||_missingMdxReference("TabsTrigger",!0),r(e,{children:[n(i.h2,{id:"the-shift-you-might-have-missed",children:n(i.a,{className:"anchor",href:"#the-shift-you-might-have-missed",children:"The Shift You Might Have Missed"})}),"\n",r(i.p,{children:["If you've been watching Salesforce closely, you already know Marketing Cloud Next is the rebuild of Marketing Cloud on the Agentforce 360 Platform with Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) at its center. But there's a detail inside that rebuild that deserves more attention from the Flow community than it's getting: ",n(i.strong,{children:"Flow Builder is now a first-class orchestration surface inside Marketing Cloud Next — the same canvas marketing admins and ops teams already use for sales and service."})]}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"Not a bolt-on. Not an admin fallback. The same canvas, extended with marketing-specific triggers. If you know Flow already, a big part of Marketing Cloud Next is suddenly familiar territory."}),"\n",n(w,{children:r(i.ul,{children:["\n",r(i.li,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"Marketing automation now runs on Flow."})," Journey Builder remains, but orchestration is moving to the same Flow Builder you use for sales and service."]}),"\n",r(i.li,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"Eight flow types"})," — five net-new marketing triggers plus three platform types (Record-Triggered, Data Cloud Record-Triggered, Autolaunched) that now light up for marketing."]}),"\n",r(i.li,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"Two trigger types are genuinely new:"})," Data Cloud Record-Triggered and Activation-Triggered flows. The rest are familiar patterns on new ground."]}),"\n",r(i.li,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"Your Flow skills transfer directly"})," into a part of the business that used to feel like a different platform entirely."]}),"\n"]})}),"\n",r(v,{children:[n(b,{value:"8",label:"Flow types",icon:"Workflow"}),n(b,{value:"5",label:"Net-new marketing triggers",icon:"Sparkles",accent:"secondary"}),n(b,{value:"3",label:"Platform types (now marketing-aware)",icon:"Layers",accent:"muted"}),n(b,{value:"1",label:"Canvas across all clouds",icon:"Target"})]}),"\n",n(i.h2,{id:"why-flow-got-promoted",children:n(i.a,{className:"anchor",href:"#why-flow-got-promoted",children:"Why Flow Got Promoted"})}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"For years, marketing automation in Salesforce lived in its own world. Journey Builder was a separate canvas with a separate paradigm. Automation Studio handled the batch jobs. If you wanted marketing to talk to sales or service, you were usually stitching things together with middleware, custom triggers, or carefully timed integrations."}),"\n",r(i.p,{children:["Marketing Cloud Next changes the architecture. Automation is built on the Agentforce 360 Platform and runs on top of Data 360, which means events from anywhere in your ecosystem — a record update, a Data 360 calculated insight, a segment refresh, an external API call — can trigger Flow Builder directly. ",n(i.strong,{children:"The same Flow Builder you already use for sales and service processes."})]}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"The practical result: one canvas that can span marketing, sales, service, commerce, and external systems. You're no longer handing work between Journey Builder, Process Builder, Flow, and middleware. It's Flow, end to end, with marketing-specific trigger types baked in."}),"\n",n(i.pre,{children:n(i.code,{className:"language-mermaid",children:'flowchart TB\n subgraph Triggers["Events that start a flow"]\n SR[Segment refresh]\n EV[Engagement event
click, form submission]\n RC[Salesforce record change]\n CI[Calculated Insight
crosses threshold]\n AP[External API call]\n end\n DC[("Data 360
unified profile")]\n FB{{"Flow Builder
one canvas"}}\n subgraph Actions["Actions across clouds"]\n MKT[Marketing
sends, consent]\n SLS[Sales
tasks, routing]\n SVC[Service
cases, alerts]\n EXT[External
webhooks, APIs]\n end\n Triggers --\x3e DC\n DC --\x3e FB\n FB --\x3e Actions\n'})}),"\n",n(d,{variant:"tip",newton:!0,children:n(i.p,{children:"Flow developers just inherited marketing automation. Go easy on the marketers — they've been living with Automation Studio."})}),"\n",n(i.h2,{id:"the-eight-flow-types",children:n(i.a,{className:"anchor",href:"#the-eight-flow-types",children:"The Eight Flow Types"})}),"\n",r(i.p,{children:["Marketing Cloud Next introduces flow ",n(i.em,{children:"trigger types"})," rather than entirely new flow concepts. The canvas, the elements, the debug experience — all recognizable. What changes is ",n(i.em,{children:"how"})," a flow starts and ",n(i.em,{children:"what data it has to work with"})," when it does."]}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"The eight types cluster into four groups by how they start:"}),"\n",n(i.pre,{children:n(i.code,{className:"language-mermaid",children:'flowchart LR\n MCN["Marketing Cloud Next
Flow Types"]\n MCN --\x3e SCH[Scheduled]\n MCN --\x3e EVT[Event-driven]\n MCN --\x3e API[API-invoked]\n MCN --\x3e REU[Reusable]\n SCH --\x3e S1["1. Segment-Triggered"]\n EVT --\x3e E1["2. Automation Event-Triggered"]\n EVT --\x3e E2["3. Salesforce Record-Triggered"]\n EVT --\x3e E3["4. Data Cloud Record-Triggered"]\n EVT --\x3e E4["7. Activation-Triggered"]\n API --\x3e A1["5. On-Demand
single record"]\n API --\x3e A2["6. Broadcast
whole segment"]\n REU --\x3e R1["8. Autolaunched"]\n'})}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"Expand each type below for when to reach for it."}),"\n",r(a,{children:[r(s,{value:"segment-triggered",children:[n(l,{children:"1. Segment-Triggered Flow — scheduled audience processing"}),r(o,{children:[n(i.p,{children:"Triggers on a schedule you define when records from a segment are injected into the flow. Think of this as the successor to batch automation — process an audience in a recurring window, with optional re-entry rules."}),r(i.p,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"When to reach for it:"})," Birthday emails, weekly nurture sends, monthly re-engagement campaigns. Anything where the audience is defined by a segment and the cadence is predictable."]})]})]}),r(s,{value:"automation-event",children:[n(l,{children:"2. Automation Event-Triggered Flow — real-time engagement response"}),r(o,{children:[n(i.p,{children:"Fires in real time when a predefined event happens — an email link click, a form submission, an engagement signal, a CRM record change surfaced through Data 360. This is the flow type that closes the loop between marketing behavior and automation."}),r(i.p,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"When to reach for it:"})," Auto-responders, welcome sequences, adding clickers to a follow-up campaign, routing high-intent signals to sales."]})]})]}),r(s,{value:"salesforce-record",children:[n(l,{children:"3. Salesforce Record-Triggered Flow — familiar territory, marketing actions"}),r(o,{children:[n(i.p,{children:"If you've built a record-triggered flow before, you already know this one. It runs when a Salesforce record (Lead, Contact, Account, etc.) is created or updated under conditions you define. Marketing Cloud Next just gives you marketing-specific actions to call from it."}),r(i.p,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"When to reach for it:"})," Notifying a marketing pod of a new qualified lead, declaring consent via the ",n(i.strong,{children:"Create Consent"})," flow action, syncing CRM state into a campaign."]})]})]}),r(s,{value:"data-cloud-record",children:[n(l,{children:"4. Data Cloud Record-Triggered Flow — trigger off unified profile signals"}),r(o,{children:[n(i.p,{children:"Here's where things get interesting. This flow type runs when a Data Model Object or a Calculated Insight changes — meaning your trigger is the unified customer profile or a score derived from it, not a single object in a single org."}),r(i.p,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"When to reach for it:"})," Firing a flow when Lifetime Value crosses a threshold, launching a win-back campaign when engagement score drops, escalating VIP support based on Data 360 intelligence."]})]})]}),r(s,{value:"on-demand",children:[n(l,{children:"5. On-Demand Flow — REST-triggered, one record at a time"}),r(o,{children:[n(i.p,{children:"Invoked via REST API from a third-party app, Apex, or another flow. Processes a single record with parameters passed at call time."}),r(i.p,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"When to reach for it:"})," Transactional sends — an SMS after a membership signup, a receipt after a purchase, a notification from an external system that needs to pass data in."]})]})]}),r(s,{value:"broadcast",children:[n(l,{children:"6. Broadcast Flow — REST-triggered, whole segment at runtime"}),r(o,{children:[n(i.p,{children:"Also API-triggered, but where On-Demand handles one record at a time, Broadcast processes an entire Dynamic Segment with criteria evaluated at runtime."}),r(i.p,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"When to reach for it:"}),' Outage notifications, mass announcements with dynamic filtering, anything where "who receives this" needs to be decided the moment the trigger fires.']})]})]}),r(s,{value:"activation",children:[n(l,{children:"7. Activation-Triggered Flow — react to segment publication"}),r(o,{children:[n(i.p,{children:"Runs when a segment is published or refreshed to a Data 360 Activation Target. You're working with activation data and attributes directly, which means personalization without running round-trips back to Data Graph queries."}),r(i.p,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"When to reach for it:"})," Coordinating sends to activation targets, enriching messages with attributes that came along for the ride when the segment was activated."]})]})]}),r(s,{value:"autolaunched",children:[n(l,{children:"8. Autolaunched Flow — the reusable building block"}),r(o,{children:[n(i.p,{children:"The workhorse. Called as a subflow from other flows with input parameters. This is how you build a library of reusable marketing primitives."}),r(i.p,{children:[n(i.strong,{children:"When to reach for it:"})," Encapsulating a consent check, a preference center update, or a lead-scoring adjustment so every campaign flow can call the same vetted logic."]})]})]})]}),"\n",n(i.h2,{id:"what-this-actually-changes",children:n(i.a,{className:"anchor",href:"#what-this-actually-changes",children:"What This Actually Changes"})}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"Here's where it helps to be honest about what's genuinely new versus what's been rebranded."}),"\n",r(f,{cols:2,children:[n(p,{icon:"Sparkles",title:"Data Cloud Record-Triggered — genuinely new",children:n(i.p,{children:"A trigger surface that didn't exist before. Calculated Insights crossing thresholds, unified profile updates, engagement scores — events Flow couldn't reach a year ago. That's a real expansion of what Flow can do."})}),n(p,{icon:"Zap",title:"Activation-Triggered — genuinely new",children:n(i.p,{children:'React to segment publication events rather than polling or scheduling around them. The difference between "check hourly" and "run when this thing happens."'})}),n(p,{icon:"Layers",title:"Record-Triggered & API-invoked — familiar, now unified",children:n(i.p,{children:"Same patterns you've been building. What's different is they now sit inside the marketing tool, so marketers or marketing ops can use them without jumping to a separate admin surface."})}),n(p,{icon:"Clock",title:"Journey Builder — still evolving",children:n(i.p,{children:"Journey Builder hasn't gone away. Salesforce keeps investing in it for customer journey experiences. Expect the line between Journey Builder and Flow to keep moving as Marketing Cloud Next matures."})})]}),"\n",n(i.h2,{id:"the-winter-26-updates-worth-knowing",children:n(i.a,{className:"anchor",href:"#the-winter-26-updates-worth-knowing",children:"The Winter '26 Updates Worth Knowing"})}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"A few Winter '26 additions are particularly relevant if you're planning to build on this:"}),"\n",r(f,{cols:3,children:[n(p,{icon:"GitBranch",title:"Path Experiment with auto-winner",children:n(i.p,{children:"The old Journey Builder-style path split is now native in Flow. Winter '26 added automatic winner selection at a 95% confidence threshold — prioritize journeys by attributes and behaviors without dropping to code."})}),n(p,{icon:"Package",title:"Form-triggered flow change sets",children:n(i.p,{children:"Move form-triggered flows, customizations and all, between orgs. If you've rebuilt a form integration by hand across sandboxes, you know why this matters."})}),n(p,{icon:"Sparkles",title:"Agentforce Campaign Creation",children:n(i.p,{children:"Agentforce can assist with brief creation and assembling multi-channel campaigns through customizable flows, as a starting draft. Treat it like any generated code: a head start, not a finished product."})})]}),"\n",n(i.h2,{id:"what-flow-developers-should-do-about-this",children:n(i.a,{className:"anchor",href:"#what-flow-developers-should-do-about-this",children:"What Flow Developers Should Do About This"})}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"The right next step depends on where you sit today. Pick your lens:"}),"\n",r(k,{defaultValue:"builder",children:[r(x,{children:[n(C,{value:"builder",children:"Flow Builder"}),n(C,{value:"lead",children:"Practice Lead"}),n(C,{value:"marketer",children:"New Marketer"}),n(C,{value:"contrib",children:"Component Author"})]}),n(T,{value:"builder",children:r(c,{size:"sm",children:[r(u,{children:[n(m,{children:"If you build flows for a living"}),n(g,{children:"Your skill set just expanded into marketing automation. The trigger types are new; the canvas isn't."})]}),n(h,{children:r("p",{children:["Start with ",n("strong",{children:"Data Cloud Record-Triggered"})," and ",n("strong",{children:"Activation-Triggered"})," — they're the trigger types with no direct parallel in what you've been doing. They're also where marketers will most want expert help, so that's where you can shape standards early."]})})]})}),n(T,{value:"lead",children:r(c,{size:"sm",children:[r(u,{children:[n(m,{children:"If you lead a Flow practice"}),n(g,{children:"Map out who owns which flow types before the marketing team starts building."})]}),n(h,{children:r("p",{children:["Marketers reasonably want to build ",n("strong",{children:"Segment-Triggered"})," and ",n("strong",{children:"Automation Event-Triggered"})," flows themselves. Shared ",n("strong",{children:"Autolaunched"}),' flows (consent, preferences, scoring) probably belong with a central ops team. Clear ownership prevents the "who broke the welcome journey" conversation.']})})]})}),n(T,{value:"marketer",children:r(c,{size:"sm",children:[r(u,{children:[n(m,{children:"If you're a marketer getting Flow for the first time"}),n(g,{children:"The ramp is friendlier than it looks."})]}),n(h,{children:r("p",{children:["Start with ",n("strong",{children:"Segment-Triggered flows"})," — they map most cleanly to batch sends you already understand. Move to ",n("strong",{children:"Automation Event-Triggered"})," when you're ready to react in real time. Save ",n("strong",{children:"Data 360 triggers"})," for when you've got a few flows under your belt — they're powerful but assume Data 360 fluency."]})})]})}),n(T,{value:"contrib",children:r(c,{size:"sm",children:[r(u,{children:[n(m,{children:"If you're building components or actions"}),n(g,{children:"Marketing Cloud Next opens a whole new surface for invocable actions."})]}),n(h,{children:n("p",{children:"Consent declarations, segment membership changes, activation triggers — all new contexts for invocable actions. If you've been building for Sales or Service, marketing is a new audience for the same skill set."})})]})})]}),"\n",n(i.h2,{id:"the-bigger-picture",children:n(i.a,{className:"anchor",href:"#the-bigger-picture",children:"The Bigger Picture"})}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"Zoom out and the pattern is consistent: Salesforce keeps consolidating automation onto Flow. Process Builder and Workflow Rules hit end of support on December 31, 2025. Approval processes are moving to Flow Orchestration, which became a standard Flow type in February 2026. Now marketing automation, too."}),"\n",n(y,{author:"The pattern",children:n(i.p,{children:"The case for investing in Flow skills has been strong for years. Marketing Cloud Next makes it stronger."})}),"\n",n(i.p,{children:"If you're a Flow developer, the work you've already done — understanding triggers, scheduling, subflows, error handling, debug logs — transfers directly into a part of the business that used to feel like a different platform entirely. That's a rare thing in this industry. Enjoy it, and go build something useful."}),"\n",n(i.h2,{id:"further-reading",children:n(i.a,{className:"anchor",href:"#further-reading",children:"Further Reading"})}),"\n",r(f,{cols:3,children:[n(p,{icon:"BookOpen",title:"8 Main Marketing Flow Types",children:r(i.p,{children:["Deep dive on each flow type with diagrams. ",n(i.a,{href:"https://the-agentic-marketer.com/marketing-cloud-next-deep-dives/marketing-cloud-next-8-flow-types/",children:"Read on The Agentic Marketer →"})]})}),n(p,{icon:"Layers",title:"Marketing Cloud Next for Engagement",children:r(i.p,{children:["Architectural overview of how Marketing Cloud Next unlocks next-generation customer journeys. ",n(i.a,{href:"https://blog.horizontaldigital.com/marketing-cloud-next-engagement-unlocking-next-generation-customer-journeys",children:"Read on Horizontal Digital →"})]})}),n(p,{icon:"Calendar",title:"Winter '26 Release Highlights",children:r(i.p,{children:["The recent Marketing Cloud Next release notes in context. ",n(i.a,{href:"https://medium.com/@marketingcloudtips/marketing-cloud-next-winter-26-release-highlights-81240775f843",children:"Read on Medium →"})]})})]})]})}return{default:function(e={}){const{wrapper:r}=e.components||{};return r?n(r,{...e,children:n(_createMdxContent,{...e})}):_createMdxContent(e)}};function _missingMdxReference(e,n){throw new Error("Expected "+(n?"component":"object")+" `"+e+"` to be defined: you likely forgot to import, pass, or provide it.")}

Guide

Content (1)

How Flows Power Marketing Cloud Next

Search