Email remains one of the most powerful ways to connect with consumers.

But when those consumers spend all day long on social networks, marketers needs to learn how to bridge the gap and leverage the brief amount of engagement that email provides and make it social for extended reach.

Email service provider WhatCounts unveiled Social Email™ today. The solution provides the ability for a recipient of an email to post a link to the message on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many others, by simply clicking on a "Share" button inserted into the email template. It allows email marketers to broaden the reach of their messages into social networks where "masses of potential new customers may be influenced" according to the release.

"As the internet has become an indispensable part of people's lives, we are consuming it in vertical slices that are relevant to each of us," said David Geller, CEO of WhatCounts, Inc. "Whether it's Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, or any of a number of other web sites and tools, consumers are beginning to self-select into communication silos that they control, and then extend to their own social networks."

Version 7.2 also boasts new features in the areas of bounce management and campaign throttling controls for improved deliverability, and a new dashboard that allows marketers to customize key performance indicators on over 40 different views based on email performance, delivery, and subscription performance.