I am thinking of writing a utility, but want to see if there is one out there already that does this, so i dont waste any time.

Here is what I am looking to do:

Sort of like an autoresponder, except it is triggered by an incoming email. For example, Joe Shmo responds to an ad via email. as soon as my software receives the email from Joe Shmo, it will send joe shmo an email back with a generic email back a certain time later (this email back to him will look like a real message and not an auto response). then joe shmo responds again responding to the mail i sent him, and when i recieve email #2 from joe, my software knows it is the second time joe sent me a email, so it sends him a different generic email. the point is joe thinks he is having a conversation with someone, but it is a generated message system.

does this exist already? if so what is it called, if not, maybe i will have to make it.

would anyone else find this useful as well?

that is not quite what im looking for, although it does look interesting, i may want that for another purpose.
that one looks like it may need manual intervention when you recieve an email, to send out the proper response. although i could be wrong, because their site doesn't really say how it work in detail.

look good to me

i dunno if there is a auto responder like this one

I think what you're describing is the definition of an autoresponder. Hell, autoresponder unlimited (very basic autoresponder) could handle that, let alone something nice like aweber.

I suppose just about any email address with an autoresponder could be setup to respond to certain words or phrases, but it would be difficult to predict every single question, let alone unreadable messages. Just setup certain email addresses to handle certain tasks.

with what im trying to do, it doesnt really have to know the contents of the messages i recieve. i just need to know how many times they emailed before in the same thread. for instance, someone responds to an ad, i want to reply back with general info without a link yet so it doesnt look like a spammer or affiliate saleman. then they respond again, then i can have a different message go to them so they think its a human, this time i can put the link in after i gain some trust they think its legit. then i can even have a 3rd message, etc. but this is triggered by them emailing me FIRST, not me spamming them like a regular autoresponder will. see what im getting at?
i need something that will grab the email and know that is a new lead. that is the trigger. than keep track of # of followups in the thread from that person.

i know of aweber autoresponders but never use them i use a different one, so i dont know if they actually do this or not. do they?

so if I understand correctly you need to count replies by a particular address, and depending on what number reply their on send a corresponding message and link? In addition include a message variables like name, address, etc

you could prob accompish this with a custom php script, and a web host that allows catch all mail boxes and an sql backend

yeah, that is pretty much what i want to do. i was wondering if something like that exists already so i can just use it instead of wasting time creating something thats usable already right now

Ahh, I don't know of any solution that does exactly that, it seems that functionally would be coupled with another mail application of some sort. None come to mind off the top of my head, however there are php coders on Digital Point that would probably be able to do this for you for around $20

Any one tried email2DB enterprise. I use it and it is very flexible as you can configure your own templates to do what you want. It is actually an email parser but I found it very flexible and useful.

You can set schedules to follow up etc. Maybe check this out