You should look at the work of the Perl Email Project. Some of their tools will no doubt be of help to you.
You'll see lots of people recommending various modules from the Mail:: and MIME:: namespaces. My advice is to ignore that and to go straight for the Email:: modules. The Perl Email Project are building a simple, consistant and complete set of modules for dealing with email. I'm sure you will will find their tools easier to use than the older modules.