Do you contact the search chair before applying for a position? In some job advertisements, the chair of search committee is named for informal inquiries.

I contacted them with a brief resume, asking if they are interested in my line of experiences or not. They simply replied me "send the application, we will review it".

I am curious what is informal inquiries? What should/can I ask?

In general, is it a bad idea to contact the search people before applying, when I am serious about a specific position? (most applications are shot in the dark, but we are extremely interested in some positions)
In general, it is a good idea to contact people you are applying to. They might say that they are looking for someone with your background (or with another).

But if they write


  send the application, we will review it


just do it. There is no shortcut. 

Don't expect that they will write how likely are you to get accepted - even forgetting about the legal things, they don't what are the other applicants.