mail working with the calendar

Hello, I am coming from the corporate world and using Outlook for email and organizing follow up in the app/program.

I am sure there must be a way to schedule a follow up call in my calendar or alert while on an email that I am missing. Flags are good, but I should use an alert pop up for a reminder to do a follow up on the email conversation.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, I do not want to add Outlook to my new MacBook Air!!!

Thank you.