The other day I got a piece of direct mail from Shaw Cable.

It was an over-sized postcard, double-sided in a standout colors.

Nothing that interesting yet … However, what was interesting is the level of personalization they included in the direct mail piece.

(front)

(back)

“Japan just got a little bit closer” To many of you that might not mean anything, but to me it does.

I lived in Japan for many years and we make calls to Japan on a regular basis.

As a marketing guy this intrigued me. How did Shaw know about my connection to Japan?

Sure we use the phone to call Nagoya, Osaka, and other cities. But most of the time our calls are through Skype.

Just looking at the list of numbers we dial would reveal several countries.

Then it hit me. Not too long ago I mentioned to one of the support people at Shaw that I was interested in their Japanese channel. I didn’t purchase it because it’s $17 a month for one channel with very limited programming.

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see how that one mention got entered into their customer database as a little piece of intelligence.

Did it make me buy? No. But I’m sure there are a good percentage of people that did. Shaw’s not only doing this for Japanese … I’m sure their going after other languages and countries as well.