How to prevent certain fields from updating on SFDC sync?

Hi Alisa-
If you don't show the Marketo profile the field, it will not map the SFDC field into Marketo.

Brigid- I'm not sure I understand. Basically I want to make sure that updates to the name field on a Contact record are not changed by Marketo. However, if the info is changed for some reason in SFDC, I do want that reflected in marketo.

Depending on how your team uses Marketo, it's possible you be able to solve this by going to Admin Settings > Field Management > [select the field you would like to block] > Field Actions > Block Field Updates > [insert appropriate tick box].

It's also possible this is something that must be set up by your SFDC admin rather than your Marketo admin.

Her's a screenshot of my first paragraph above: 

Thanks David. Is there a way to set this blocking only for Contact Records?

Ah right, forgot about that detail. I'd speak with your SFDC admin about it—unless that's you, in which case you might get some funny looks if you do that. In that case, I'd post on that community forum. I can't think of a solution within Marketo.

Ok thanks David.

Thanks all. I spoke with my SFDC admin and he's put a rule in place that doesn't really block the change from Marketo but immediately changes it back to it's previous value if Marketo changes it. 

Alisa, can you provide more details on how the salesforce rule works? Are you storing the prior values in separate fields? Are you doing this in separate workflow rules or in triggers? Thanks!