Hi everyone! Leia Smith here, your friendly neighborhood color-coding Marketing Gal. I’m still buzzing from Connections 2025, and let me tell you, it was a stellar event! As the Marketing Gal here at ListEngage, I had the privilege of attending with our incredible team, and we’re still unpacking all the insights. But for today, I wanted to share the big themes that really stood out to us while on-site in Chicago.

Connections 2025 Wrapped: The Big Three (plus, one curve ball)  

I went into Connections with a version of Matthew McConaughey saying “AI, AI, AI,” as a Daze & Confused tribute with a sprinkle of Woody Harrelson besting McConaughey by using Agentforce. In my mind, going into this year’s Connection season, AI would be at the forefront of every session, booth, and conversation. What I found was much broader – I was right about AI being nearly omnipresent, but the conversations at Connections broke past prior containers of MarTech x AI. I’ve narrowed it all down into three key findings, along with a foundational concept that unexpectedly kept bubbling up.

1. Marketing Cloud Next: It’s an Enhancement, Not a New Product 

When Marketing Cloud Next was first unveiled, I think many of us, myself included, paused and thought, “Is this another new marketing product we need to learn?”. But as Cole Fisher, our Strategic Solutions Lead, brilliantly explained in our CNX Wrapped Webinar, it’s actually an enhancement to what we’re already doing within Salesforce marketing today. Think of it less as a new product and more as the next evolution of Marketing Cloud. 

The core value I see in Marketing Cloud Next is all about delivering additive value and unlocking new capabilities without disrupting your current operations. What does this convergence of marketing capability really mean? 

• Breaking Down Walls: Marketing Cloud Next challenges standard practices, like those “do not reply” emails. Why shut down a conversation point? This is our chance to open dialogues, proactively provide direction, and truly blend the previously walled-off boundaries between marketing, sales, and service. 
• Two-Way Conversations: One of the most exciting capabilities is two-way conversational texting for SMS and WhatsApp. This transforms purely outbound promotional messages into engaging dialogues, allowing rerouting to service or ticket management. This capability also expands options for Account Engagement users who previously needed third-party tools. 
• Unified Content & Segmentation: It leverages the Salesforce CMS, meaning you won’t be recreating content. Data Cloud segments feed directly into Marketing Cloud Next, and you can even build segments using natural language prompts! 
• True AI: While we’ve had machine learning features like send time optimization, Marketing Cloud Next introduces AI capabilities that are entirely customized and optimized to your specific needs and data, moving beyond out-of-the-box metrics. This means AI can help develop campaigns, optimize touch points, and create new assets. 

The big takeaway here is a seamless experience for marketers, where we’re not jumping between tools, but working within an integrated platform built on the Salesforce metadata platform, with Data Cloud and AI as its foundation. 

2. Agentforce: The Engine Driving Conversational AI 

Agentforce was everywhere at Connections, and for good reason. During our CNX Wrapped Webinar, Fred Homner, our Head of Customer Success & Salesforce Practices, highlighted that Agentforce has matured beyond just creating content or segments. It’s now being pushed as an engine, a conversation starter, natively across all Salesforce products. It’s the third generation of AI in Salesforce, designed for launching with clicks, not code. 

Here’s what truly stuck out: 

• From Creation to Conversation: Agentforce empowers autonomous one-to-one personalization, real-time recommendations, 24/7 omnichannel conversations, and self-optimizing campaigns. We’re seeing real-life use cases, not just rudimentary examples. 
• Start Small, Build Big: Salesforce is emphasizing a framework of “create, engage, qualify, optimize”. This goes hand-in-hand with ListEngage’s own ACE framework (Adopt, Create, Excel), advocating for a “crawl, walk, run” method. Start with achievable pilots, then build out use cases, and continuously iterate for ROI. 
• Agentforce 3 Innovations: The recent announcement of Agentforce 3 brings two game-changers: 
  
  
  • Command Center: This dashboard provides a clean, transparent view of real-time activity, adoption, and usage metrics. It’s crucial for demonstrating ROI and ensuring accountability for stakeholders. 
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP): Think of MCP as the “USBC for AI agents”. It’s a common language that allows enterprises to easily connect to Agent Force and other platforms, both inside and outside of Salesforce. It ensures AI models understand contextual data like user roles, CRM data, object relationships, and business rules, grounding responses on the Einstein Trust Layer for accuracy and relevance.
     
• Industry-Specific Actions: Agentforce 3 also introduced a wealth of pre-built, industry-specific actions, making it even easier for customers to quickly adapt this powerful functionality. 
  

And for a little shameless plug, ListEngage is proud to be one of the 30 specialized partners of choice for Agentforce implementations! We’re leaning into this because we truly believe in its power.  

One more shameless plug, we won the Agentic Showdown at Connections – I couldn’t be more thrilled to be on this team, doing this work, and finding new ways to create better customer experience. Check out the showdown here; it’s pretty cool. Skip to 16:40 if you want to see our Head of Applied AI, Pratik Desa, on stage crushing the demo.  

3. Data: The Unsung Hero Underpinning Everything

While Marketing Cloud Next and Agentforce were flashy, the constant, silent force underpinning everything was data. We’re not just talking “data cloud” here; we’re talking about data in its purest, most foundational sense. I’ve said it before – I’ll say it again – data is king, queen, bishop, and sometimes pawn one, because it can either move us forward or stall us completely. 

The key message around data was clear: 

• Perfection Isn’t the Goal: Cole emphasized that data doesn’t need to be perfect to get started. Many organizations sit on the sidelines overanalyzing their data, while competitors move forward with an iterative approach, building momentum with what they have. 
• Iterative Success: Just like marketing, data is never truly “done”. It’s constantly being improved and iterated upon. The Agentic Showdown, where ListEngage proudly won (another shameless plug!), demonstrated this perfectly. We started with a single use case and slowly expanded, iterating with the data we had. 
• Data Cloud as Foundation: Data Cloud is no longer just a product; it’s a foundational platform, part of almost every Salesforce offering. It acts as a “tunnel” or “bridge” that connects all these other platforms and functionalities, including Marketing Cloud Next and Agent Force. You can use it to its full extent or as minimally as needed. 
• Lean and Agile: The unified platform concept lends itself to lean, fast, quick ways to get started and deliver ROI. Implementations are becoming more like configurations or simply “turning on” the product, focusing on simplicity and ease of use. 

4. The Surprise Element: Foundational Best Practices 

This one genuinely surprised me! Amidst all the buzz of emerging technology, there was a significant return to foundational applications of best practices at Connections. It felt like an homage to the ExactTarget Connections days with community hubs focused on marketer-friendly conversations around things like IP addresses, deliverability, changing hex values, and warming an IP. 

Why is this important now? 

• Back to Basics: It’s crucial for new marketers entering the industry to understand these core concepts. 
• Informing AI: Even as AI steps in to complement or take over some tasks, marketers still need a foundational understanding to inform better prompts and dictate what AI is doing. Knowing the basics ensures we can get better performance out of AI. 

Connections 2025 underscored the story of convergence – bringing together data, AI, and marketing capabilities into a unified, seamless platform. I was such a fan of this year’s Connections, in fact, we made a lookbook. Does it show too terribly much that I was my high school yearbook editor all these years later?  

If you’re grappling with these concepts or wondering how to apply them to your organization, don’t hesitate to reach out! At ListEngage, we’re here to help you navigate this exciting new era. 

Thanks for reading, and happy marketing! 

Leia Smith Marketing Gal