f13.net

So I have something I'd like to do with my work related website, and I don't know if it's possible. Hoping someone here might have a suggestion.

I have a site set up for work that promotes all of our products: www.darrenmantle.com (http://www.darrenmantle.com)
On that site in various locations are links to our Corporate Website (www.topproducer.com) that provide additional details on some of the products.

It's set up so that if a client clicks on one of those links, when they get redirected to the Corporate site it drops a cookie on thier system. This cookie masks our general sales number and online store links on the Corporate site, and instead shows the client my contact info. Here's one of those links, for example:

http://www.topproducer.com/Products/Top-Producer-7i/Top-Producer-7i.aspx?utm_source=TES&utm_medium=Branded-Email&utm_term=Darren Mantle&utm_content=Grapghic-7i&utm_campaign=TES-Branded-Email&sid=dmantle#readmore (http://www.topproducer.com/Products/Top-Producer-7i/Top-Producer-7i.aspx?utm_source=TES&utm_medium=Branded-Email&utm_term=Darren Mantle&utm_content=Grapghic-7i&utm_campaign=TES-Branded-Email&sid=dmantle#readmore)

The problem is, that visitors seldom actually click those links, since they usually find what they need on my page. Currently, most of the traffic I get to my site is through links in emails I send to customers.

Here's my question: Can anyone think of a way that I can create a link in an email that will take the client to www.darrenmantle.com, but will drop in the cookie associated with this link:
http://www.topproducer.com/Products/Top-Producer-7i/Top-Producer-7i.aspx?utm_source=TES&utm_medium=Branded-Email&utm_term=Darren Mantle&utm_content=Grapghic-7i&utm_campaign=TES-Branded-Email&sid=dmantle#readmore (http://www.topproducer.com/Products/Top-Producer-7i/Top-Producer-7i.aspx?utm_source=TES&utm_medium=Branded-Email&utm_term=Darren Mantle&utm_content=Grapghic-7i&utm_campaign=TES-Branded-Email&sid=dmantle#readmore) without actually taking the client to the topproducer.com site?

You could put a script on your page that checks the client for the cookie you are looking for and if they don't have that cookie, it drops it on them. Or if you want to jerry-rig it, create a page on your site that drops the cookie but isn't the home page that drops the cookie on them when they go to the page.

I usually block any cookies not originating from that site, so that might be a problem.

Image cookies.

But the "image URL" is not really an image — well it can serve up an invisible .gif/.png, but it will be a PHP/Ruby/Perl/$OtherWebScriptingOrProgrammingLanguage invocation that squirts a cookie out…

/ditto

But most web visitors are not that savvy, or even possess a desire to toggle on what you and I believe to be a preferable online setting…

Privacy defaults to medium in IE which automatically blocks cookies for third party websites.

Eh, my testing has revealed that IE7 privacy settings are highly arbitrary and even going in and fiddling with non-related settings can set/unset other settings…

Why aren't they checking the sid URL parameter in addition to checking the cookie?

Well, if default settings in IE prevent third party cookies (which really, they should) then I probably won't bother. Thanks for the ideas though.