Choosing the Right Personalization Solution: Salesforce Personalization vs. Marketing Cloud Personalization

If you’re exploring personalization solutions for your business, Salesforce offers two powerful options designed for different needs and scenarios. Salesforce Personalization (SP) is their next-generation solution built directly on Data 360 (FKA Data Cloud), leveraging near real-time customer data to deliver AI-powered, 1:1 personalized experiences. Marketing Cloud Personalization (MCP) is a mature, standalone platform that specializes in cross-channel personalization across web, email, mobile apps, and messaging channels. Understanding the differences between these solutions will help you choose the right fit for your organization’s current needs and future goals.

The key distinction between these platforms lies in how they integrate with your data and what channels they support today. 

Salesforce Personalization requires Data 360 and is designed as part of your unified Salesforce ecosystem—meaning all your customer data lives in one place without duplication, and you benefit from seamless integration across Sales, Service, Marketing, and Agentforce. Currently, SP focuses on delivering personalized product and content recommendations on your website and through Agentforce, with mobile app support recently released and email personalization arriving later in the year. 

Marketing Cloud Personalization, meanwhile, works as a standalone solution that doesn’t require Data 360 or any other Salesforce products. It’s ready to personalize across all your marketing channels—including email, mobile, and messaging—right out of the box.

In the simplest terms:

So which solution is right for your business? 

If you’re already using Data 360 or planning to invest in Salesforce’s unified customer data platform, Salesforce Personalization is the ideal choice. It allows you to leverage all your Data 360 data to create hyper-relevant experiences, use advanced segmentation and calculated insights, and benefit from AI recommendations that optimize for both customer preferences and your business goals. SP also enriches your Data 360 profile with real-time web engagement data, giving your sales and service teams better insights for personalized interactions. This option works best if your primary need is web personalization now, with plans to expand to other channels as those capabilities become available.

However, if you need cross-channel personalization immediately—particularly for email and mobile campaigns — or if you’re not currently using or planning to implement Data 360 in the near term, Marketing Cloud Personalization may be the better fit. MCP can be implemented quickly (typically within 8-12 weeks) and doesn’t require any prerequisites. It’s especially powerful for Marketing Cloud Engagement customers who want to integrate personalized recommendations into Journey Builder, trigger messaging based on real-time behavior, and deliver coordinated experiences across web and email channels. MCP has proven its value as a Gartner-recognized Leader in personalization engines and is a critical component of many successful marketing programs today.

Not sure which personalization path fits your needs long term? That’s okay. You’re not locked into a single path. 

For customers who start with MCP but later adopt Data 360, Salesforce offers the MCP+ Edition, which provides access to both platforms. This allows you to continue using MCP for the channels it excels at while gradually adopting Salesforce Personalization for web and future use cases—all without double-paying or disrupting your existing implementation. With upcoming tools to enable both solutions to work side-by-side on your website, you have the flexibility to evolve your personalization strategy as your business needs change. 

The best approach is to evaluate where you are today with Data 360 adoption, which channels you need to personalize immediately, and how quickly you need to implement, then choose the solution that aligns with your current requirements and long-term vision.

If you need help objectively identifying where you are, assessing where you want to be, and figuring out what solution makes the most sense – we’re one DM, email, or form submission away. Drop us a line. We’d love to talk.