Patent ID: 7120590

Claim:
A method for electronically identifying a consumer without requiring consumer registration, the method comprising: embedding a unique identifier within a web site address, the unique identifier uniquely identifying an email recipient; including the web site address in an electronic mail message sent to the email recipient, wherein the web site address provides the email recipient with access to one or more web sites; establishing a connection between a client computer used by the email recipient to receive the email and a server computer providing access to the one or more web sites, in response to the email recipient selecting a reference to the web site address included in the electronic mail message; providing the unique identifier to the server computer by way of sending the web site address to the server computer in a request submitted by the client computer to access said one or more web sites, independent from any consumer profile information previously stored on the client computer; parsing the web site address in the request, to retrieve the unique identifier embedded in the web site address; identifying the email recipient based on the retrieved unique identifier; and tracking the email recipient's movement within the one or more web sites by associating the unique identifier with information that defines consumer activity within said one or more web sites.