It looks to me like ERE syntax is mostly upward-compatible with .NET's regex flavor, as it is with most other "Perl-compatible" flavors (Perl, PHP, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, Java...). In other words, anything you can do in an ERE regex, you should be able to do in an identical .NET regex. Certainly your example:
^\+(<{7} \.|={7}$|>{7} \.)
means the same thing in .NET as it does in ERE. The only major exception I can see is in the area of POSIX bracket expressions; .NET follows the Unicode standard instead.
It's when you go to apply the regex that things really get different. In C# you might apply that regex like this:
string result = Regex.Match(targetString, @"^\+(<{7} \.|={7}$|>{7} \.)").Value;
C#'s verbatim strings save you having to escape backslashes like in some other languages' string literals; you only have to escape quotation marks, which you do by doubling them:
@"He said, ""Look out!""";
Does that answer your question?