How to block specific field value updates between Marketo & Salesforce

Question

Hello, I am curious to know if there is a way to tell Marketo not to overwrite certain field values an a SFDC picklist field when syncing to Salesforce? Specifically, when it comes to records that already exist in Salesforce, but did not exist in Marketo prior to a form submission. This is consent related and we want to ensure an explicit opt-in or opt-out value is not overwritten with an “unconfirmed” value.

For instance, a net new person submits a form and does not check the consent checkbox on the form, so the value pushed from the form to Marketo is “unconfirmed”. In Salesforce, a record already exists with this email address and the value on the SFDC picklist field is either an explicit opt-in or explicit opt-out value. How can we ensure the explicit opt-in/opt-out value in Salesforce is not updated to the unconfirmed value when the record is synced from Marketo to SFDC?

adesrala1 · Answer

​@josh_mccaa“Specifically, when it comes to records that already exist in Salesforce, but did not exist in Marketo prior to a form submission.”On this above part of your scenario, do you have a custom sync configuration in place where records can exist in Salesforce but not in Marketo?If a record already exists in Salesforce and Marketo attempts to create a new record with the same email address, Marketo will generally encounter a duplicate record error rather than creating a second Salesforce record.Understanding yoursync architecture would help clarify the expected behavior and determine the best approach for preserving the consent value in Salesforce.There are a couple of approaches you can consider to block the update:At the Salesforce level, you can modify the Marketo Sync User's field-level permissions to prevent Marketo from updating the consent field altogether. This ensures that values maintained in Salesforce are not overwritten during synchronization.On the Marketo side, another option is to configure the field to restrict updates from specific sources. InAdmin > Field Management, locate the field and use the"Block Updates From"setting to prevent updates originating fromForm Fill outactivities. This can help ensure that an "Unconfirmed" value captured on a form does not overwrite an existing explicit consent value.Additional smart campaign logic to only update consent fields when its empty [instead of ‘unconfirmed’you can have ‘null’ so you report will have opt-in/opt-out or blank], rather than allowing default or intermediary values to overwrite existing consent states.

There are a couple of approaches you can consider to block the update:

Sign up

Login with SSO

Login to the community

Login with SSO

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded