I was researching on this topic, as we are facing this issue with contact information, for example: email.
In our case, we want to ensure that for as long as someone doesn't have a proper account with us (in a separate system, let's call it "Compliance System"), we want them to be able to update their email address through form submission etc.
Typically, after they are converted, they have an account in our "Compliance System", which only pushes updates to Salesforce.
When that is the case, they can change their email address there and it syncs to SFDC, then to Marketo.
The problem we are trying to solve is Marketo updating contact info on every form submission because that makes Salesforce and our Compliance system to step out of sync (the info only flows down from Compliance System).
It seems like the only suggestions / creative workarounds are:
to use proxy fields (so, "proxyEmail") and let a smart campaign push that value to "Email" on every update of "proxyEmail", as long as the record is not a Contact in Salesforce yet. I read about it here as well: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Product-Discussions/Blocking-field-updates-depending-on-record-based-criteria/m-p/28978/highlight/true#M2306
to block the Email field from updates from form fill outs (potentially list uploads and maybe API as well)
Our current solution has been to block Marketo sync from updating a specific record type's contact fields (and this is probably causing a sync backlog).
The first solution would give us the required precision, but It means a complete refactoring (need to replace all contact fields with proxy fields in all integrations and more than a 100 forms)
The second solution is too generic (until someone is a contact it would be ok for them to update their phone and email, in case they gave junk email address / fake information initially), but also the simplest. We also have two record types for two types of customers and we may not want to apply this for both...
Are there any other options out there? Is there a way to block or stop changes of fields in Salesforce without Marketo categorizing it as a sync failure and creating a sync backlog? Maybe silently ignore the update?
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