query for functionality: keeping track of follow-up emails?

[John Owens <john_owens@yahoo.com>]

Greetings, I would like the following functionality for my email client, and welcome ideas and suggestions!

I send a lot of email that I hope will be answered. Occasionally I donʼt get an answer, and Iʼd like to follow up if thatʼs the case. What I could do is keep track of every email that I send as a todo item, and then check off that todo item when I get a reply. But the common case is that I do get a reply, and Iʼd like to optimize for that case; Iʼd be doing a lot of bookkeeping otherwise. Iʼd only like reminders when I donʼt get a reply.

My ideal system would allow me to send an email and set some sort of reminder (perhaps cc: another address?) that reminds me in a designated amount of time *only if I donʼt get a reply*. Currently there are services like followup.cc that partially fit the bill: I can cc: a message to 1w@followup.cc and in a week, Iʼll get an email reminder. But, followup.cc has no access to my mail stream and canʼt watch for replies; what Iʼd *like* instead is something that watches my mail stream for Message-IDs and *only* reminds me at the designated time if it hasnʼt seen the initiating Message-ID.

Any pointers to anything like this, whether it be in Wanderlust or elsewhere? I use Wanderlust primarily, but Mail.app runs in the background, so my backup plan is writing it in AppleScript and running it in Mail.app, I suppose. I donʼt have access to procmail, which might have fit the bill as well.

JDO