Agentic Marketing: Understanding the Next Major Evolution in Marketing

In just a few months, the term “Agentic Marketing” has become increasingly prominent in announcements from major technology companies, industry conferences, and conversations among marketing leaders.

Yet behind this emerging concept lies much more than another trend. It represents a new stage in the evolution of marketing technology and in the way businesses engage with their customers.

According to McKinsey’s latest The State of AI 2025 report, published in November 2025, 88% of organizations now use artificial intelligence in at least one business function, up from 78% a year earlier. Even more telling, 62% say they are already experimenting with AI agents.

For more than two decades, every major technological innovation has enabled businesses to take another step forward in the way they manage customer relationships.

In 1999, Salesforce helped pioneer cloud-based CRM, paving the way for a more unified approach to customer relationship management. A few years later, platforms such as Eloqua, Marketo, Pardot, and ExactTarget helped bring marketing automation into the mainstream, enabling teams to automate campaigns and personalize communications at scale. In 2013, Salesforce reinforced the strategic importance of this market by acquiring ExactTarget for $2.5 billion.

Then, in 2022, the arrival of ChatGPT marked another turning point. Generative AI became widely accessible and began transforming the way marketing teams create content.

Today, another shift is taking shape. AI can analyze context, recommend actions, and support teams in their decision-making. This evolution is what we now call Agentic Marketing.

Agentic Marketing is an approach in which AI agents work alongside marketing teams to achieve business objectives.

Unlike traditional tools, which execute predefined scenarios, an agent can analyze a situation, understand its context, consider different options, and recommend, or even execute the most relevant action within the rules and guardrails defined by the organization.

Importantly, agents are not intended to take control of marketing strategy. Their role is to enable teams to focus on higher-value decisions while AI supports analysis and execution.

Agentic Marketing therefore represents an evolution in the role of artificial intelligence: AI is no longer used solely to generate content; it is increasingly becoming part of the decision-making process.

Imagine a company organizing a webinar for its prospects.

With a traditional marketing automation approach, teams design a predefined journey: invitation, reminder, registration confirmation, thank-you email, followed by different follow-up campaigns depending on whether or not the participant attended the event.

With an agentic approach, the starting point is different.

The objective is defined first: maximize qualified registrations and sales opportunities generated by the webinar.

From there, the agent analyzes the available data, identifies the contacts most likely to attend, adapts messages to their profiles, recommends the best time to send a follow-up, and can even suggest that a sales representative reach out to prospects showing the strongest level of interest.

The marketer’s role evolves accordingly. Marketing teams define the objectives, establish the framework within which the agent can operate, and retain control over strategic decisions, while AI helps optimize campaign execution.

Agentic Marketing is attracting so much attention because several major technological developments are converging at the same time.

AI models are now capable of understanding complex instructions, reasoning across multiple steps, and using different tools to achieve a goal. According to the Stanford AI Index 2025, AI model performance continues to advance rapidly, paving the way for increasingly autonomous systems.

At the same time, businesses have access to richer customer data than ever before through CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, mobile applications, and customer service tools. Marketing platforms are also evolving to make use of this information in real time.

Together, these developments are making it possible to envision systems that can support marketing teams throughout the customer journey, from identifying an opportunity to personalizing individual interactions.

In other words, Agentic Marketing is not the result of a single breakthrough.

It is the result of several technologies reaching maturity at the same time, creating new possibilities for marketing leaders.

Salesforce is one of the technology companies turning this evolution into a tangible reality. In recent months, the company has made a series of announcements around Marketing Cloud Next, Agentforce, Data Cloud, and, more recently, its acquisition of Qualified.

At first glance, these developments may appear independent.

In reality, they point toward the same broader ambition: enabling marketing teams to work alongside intelligent agents that can leverage customer data, recommend relevant actions, and improve campaign performance.

We will explore each of these developments in greater detail in the upcoming articles in this series.

Agentic Marketing is not a break from modern marketing.

It is part of an ongoing evolution that began with CRM, continued with marketing automation, and accelerated with generative AI.

What is different today is that AI is no longer simply helping teams produce more. It is increasingly helping them decide what to do next.

For marketing leaders, the challenge will therefore go beyond adopting new technologies. It will be about learning how to work effectively with intelligent agents that can analyze context, recommend actions, and accelerate the execution of marketing strategies.

Just as marketing automation opened a new chapter two decades ago, Agentic Marketing is opening another one today. The question is no longer whether it will transform marketing, but how quickly organizations will learn to harness its potential.