As most of you know, I’m young (22) and NTR is my first professional job. I’m definitely a digital native and, as such, consider myself fairly capable in stuff like learning new apps, transversing the net, and email — actually, in my world outside of work, email is almost obsolete.

So it was kind of a shock to find that, in general, tech-at-work is very different than tech-in-life— especially email. In tech-at-work subject lines are critical, emoji are an absolute no-no, capitals and punctuation marks are required, spelling matters and how you sign off can be a minefield.

You should always keep in mind that you’re not perfect and it’s okay to make mistakes; what is not okay is to keep making the same ones and refusing to continuously improve.

Because I do biz dev I write a lot of emails. The first thing I always keep in mind is that I’m from Russia. And I work with USA leads.

Different languages, different cultures, different businesses and different email DOs and DON’Ts.

Most of us run on a kind of autopilot, so it’s hard to remember that when talking/writing to someone from a different culture you should not always act the way you’ve been taught, instead you need to act more like them.

You need keep in mind what they might think, how they consider your words, actions and details of your style — and it doesn’t matter how weird the result is for you.

Some things are universal – such as the subject line tips. There always should be one; it should be brief and concrete, that’s clear.

Differences begin with how you start the conversation.

In Russia, business letter must be always as formal as possible, you would never say “Hi Lena;” it’s always “Hello dear Elena L’vovna” (father’s name); sometimes it’s even necessary to use their surname. Your letter can never be too personal or informal, that’s definitely weird in Russia.

That’s why it was so strange for me from the very beginning, especially when I started to work with folks from the startup community — they’re so friendly and lovely with all those “thank you,” “appreciate that,” and other polite and a bit informal phrases, like “great working with you” and “hope to meet you sometime.” I was melting.

Spaces between paragraphs are also painful. Russians love long, difficult sentences, consisting of 3 or more parts. For sure, a solid wall of text decreases the chance of getting your message across correctly, but there’s nothing weird or bad about it.

We use paragraphs only when the subject changes; one paragraph for one thought feels a bit too… I don’t know, chit-chatty manner? Not very professional?

In English, however, the situation is quite the opposite. I’ve asked my US contacts why such short paragraphs and they tell me it is because people tend to scan, not read carefully, as Russians do. That information helped me a lot, because it made so much sense.

Questions are another difficult part of communications for me.

In Russia you are considered stupid if you ask questions and it’s your duty to always look smart. So we never ask unless we can propose, we never ask unless we can pretend we got it, because who wants to look stupid?

Even when you’re talking to a professional in some expertise, you will always try to look as professional and experienced as they are by reading brief notes on the subject and googling unfamiliar words.

It’s really hard to accept that you’re allowed to ask if something is unclear to you — no matter how complex.

Signatures are another headache. They are often overloaded with all the working contacts, images, your business card, different colors, links or they are blank as a desert. You need to decide what is truly essential and then decide the best way to display it. I’m lucky, because our NTR designer developed our official sigs.

I think that covers all the obvious differences and it’s a lot to keep in mind, however…

I think most mistakes result from culture — not just country cultural differences, but your personal culture, which involves your own goals and values. They are reflected in how you value your recipient’s time, their interest I, and how much care and attention you show them.

For example, I don’t really like to answer questions that seem to me pretty obvious and sometimes I think that we can combine the answers to all the questions in one sentence.

But then I remind myself that they don’t have my knowledge base and if they took the time to ask they deserve a clear-to-them answer. Responding this way shows respect.

All that said, even when I think I’m crushing and doing fine, I still like to take an objective figure out what I can improve. So, today I reviewed my typical emails against Business Insider email tips list. 

Finally, introductions are probably the most sensitive emails any of us sends.

I read an explanation from Anand Sanwal of CB Insights and finally understand why the double opt-in is the best one to use and also why it is the most likely to get a positive response — it goes back to respect.  Great advice!