Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next: A Reality Check of the New Email Editor
Since summer 2025, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next (Growth and Advanced) has been available as a marketing automation solution built directly on the Salesforce Core platform. It includes a newly developed email editor. Users of the legacy Marketing Cloud Engagement solution (formerly ExactTarget), accustomed to the Content Builder's features, will find significant changes in the new editor. While the drag-and-drop interface may seem familiar at first, it quickly becomes apparent during template development that the “Next” editor currently falls significantly short of Content Builder's capabilities. In its current state, the Next editor appears conceptually and technically immature. In the following analysis, we examine its capabilities, limitations, and implications for email production.
The “Brand” Component: A Good Idea with Implementation Shortcomings
A key new feature in Next is the “Brand” component, which allows you to configure overarching “styles” that are then available in all templates and emails. Conceptually, this is a welcome innovation compared to the Content Builder. The idea behind it is as follows: When updating the corporate design (CD), it is no longer necessary to manually update all templates and ongoing email journeys, a process that previously required significant manual effort. Now, a single adjustment made centrally is sufficient and takes effect automatically and immediately in all template-based emails.
However, the practical implementation of this feature falls short for professional marketers. The editor rigidly dictates which elements can be customized, limiting creative freedom. Specifically, one can primarily adjust basic parameters, such as standard colors, fundamental typography, and simple button properties (e.g., padding and corner radius). As soon as the corporate design imposes more complex requirements, such as specific hover effects, color gradients, or detailed formatting variations for different heading levels (H1, H2, H3), one runs into hard limits. As a result, email template developers no longer have full control over the final layout of the email.
This issue is further exacerbated by the editor’s technical architecture, which results in inadequate CSS generation and lack of code access. Surprisingly, the CSS definitions generated by Salesforce fall short of common best-practice standards in email development. These definitions are created in the background based on inputs in the “Brand” component. The result is display issues in notoriously problematic email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook. Furthermore, the specific HTML and CSS quirks of regional email providers do not appear to be consistently addressed by the generated code. The critical problem for customers is that they cannot resolve these display issues on their own. Since the new "Styles" are merely configuration metadata, access to the underlying CSS of the standard components is no longer available during template development. Manual intervention, such as adding specific Outlook hacks via code, is not supported within the drag-and-drop blocks.
Setbacks in Mobile Optimization
The responsive controls for desktop and mobile displays have a smaller set of features than the SFMC Content Builder.
- In the Content Builder, it was possible to freely configure how specific blocks were arranged or hidden on mobile devices.
- In the Next Editor, the options are limited to “Stack on Mobile” (arrange them below each other) and “Resize” (adjust the size).
It is virtually impossible to optimize the user experience on mobile devices for specific target audiences with these highly simplified tools.
Workflow Disruptions: HTML One-Way Street and Lack of Block Storage
Anyone attempting to circumvent these limitations by using plain HTML must overcome significant workflow hurdles.
HTML is a one-way street. While using HTML templates is still possible, switching to HTML mode is irreversible. Once you start working in the code, you can no longer return to the drag-and-drop editor. The same applies to individual content blocks.
Lack of a block library: Frequently used blocks could easily be saved and reused in the Content Builder. In Next, however, it is no longer straightforward to save blocks directly from the template.
Testing is more difficult. In Next, a test send only works with a test segment containing at least one contact. This requires a functioning connection to Salesforce Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud). Otherwise, no real tests can be run.
This has serious practical consequences. Those who need pixel-perfect, cross-client, error-free emails must work "freestyle" with HTML templates. However, this means the team loses the convenience of the drag-and-drop editor and must rely on staff with HTML expertise. Currently, the only way to combine convenience with error-free code is to use external, template-based email editors that allow full CSS access. The resulting HTML can then be uploaded to Marketing Cloud.
A silver lining: Stricter quality assurance.
In addition to the critical issues listed above, the Next Editor offers functional advantages. For example, the new template editor allows for much stricter control over editing individual sections. Marketers can configure the template so that they can simply populate content in their day-to-day work without the risk of accidentally altering the underlying structure. This represents a significant improvement in quality assurance, particularly for larger teams.
Conclusion
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next Editor requires Content Builder users to rethink their approach, forcing them to make painful compromises in terms of design and technical flexibility. Careful planning and a clear template strategy are essential to remaining productive under the new guidelines. However, since Salesforce has added important feature updates to the Next Editor in recent releases, such as AMPscript support and a text version, we can hope that future versions will address the weaknesses in CSS rendering and code accessibility.
