I don't think quotemeta is what you want in this case... the '@' and '$' symbols still cause interpolation even inside of the "\Q" usage of quotemeta. You can use the quotemeta() function to escape them, but then you'll also print the backslashes. This happens because the string isn't interpolated recursively. Consider the following:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;

## wrong, causes error
# print "\Qblakem@foo1.com\E\n";

## wrong, prints the backslashes
print quotemeta('blakem@foo2.com'),"\n";

## wrong, still prints backslashes
my $escaped = quotemeta('blakem@foo3.com');
print "$escaped\n";
print $escaped, "\n";

## right
my $email = 'blakem@foo4.com';
print "$email\n";

## right
print "blakem\@foo5.com\n";
print 'blakem@foo6.com',"\n";

=output
blakem\@foo2\.com
blakem\@foo3\.com
blakem\@foo3\.com
blakem@foo4.com
blakem@foo5.com
blakem@foo6.com
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From perlop:

You cannot include a literal $ or @ within a \Q sequence. An unescaped
+ $ or @ interpolates
the corresponding variable, while escaping will cause the literal stri
+ng \$ to be inserted.
You'll need to write something like m/\Quser\E\@\Qhost/.
[download]

So, either put the backslash in by hand if you are simply printing the string

print "blakem\@foo.com";
print 'blakem@foo.com';
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or assign it to a scalar and print the scalar

my $email = 'blakem@foo.com';
print $email;
[download]

-Blake