Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig exacttarget.com. NS
Answer
exacttarget.com. 4 NS dns1.p02.nsone.net.
exacttarget.com. 4 NS dns3.p02.nsone.net.
exacttarget.com. 4 NS dns2.p02.nsone.net.
exacttarget.com. 4 NS dns4.p02.nsone.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0