A consultant explains how a sending domain differs from a customer ' s primary domain.

Configuring a dedicated sending domain (used for links, tracking, and authentication) separate from the company ' s primary corporate domain is fundamentally a DNS delegation exercise, and the two gating questions a consultant must confirm with IT are precisely about DNS control and organizational policy. First, the IT team must confirm they are able to modify their domain ' s DNS entries at all — without edit access to the authoritative DNS zone, no sending-domain configuration (CNAME records for link/tracking domains, SPF/DKIM entries) can proceed. Second, because a dedicated sending domain is typically implemented as a subdomain (for example, email.company.com) with its DNS delegated or pointed to Marketing Cloud ' s infrastructure, IT must confirm whether company policy permits delegating subdomains to a third-party platform like Salesforce — some organizations restrict this for security or governance reasons. Option C, about creating and posting DNS files when self-hosting, is not a standard Marketing Cloud domain configuration concept — Marketing Cloud does not require the customer to ' host ' DNS files. Option D, giving Marketing Cloud direct access to update DNS records, is not how the process works; the customer ' s own IT team makes the DNS changes based on records Salesforce provides, rather than granting Salesforce direct DNS access. Reference: Sending Domain Configuration, Email Domain Setup.