I have a list of people who I want to encourage to sign up for an event. I can send a link that allows them to update their contact information, using the contact hash. What I would like to do is send them a similar link that would create a new event registration for their contact ID. This would solve a couple problems:

• Avoid duplicate contact entries from being created.
• Auto-populate contact fields make the user experience more pleasant.

Am I missing a way to do this, or is there a way to implement it short of a new core feature?