MailMorph

MailMorph

Making eDMs in Minutes with an LLM All-in-One Editing Suite

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The Problem

Creating communication materials should be seamless, simple and fast, so why does it take so damn long to create Electronic Digital Mailers (eDMs)? Despite eDMs being the most common Whole-of-Government (WOG) communication medium, their creation process is inefficient and time consuming (from our survey results approx. 4-9 hours per eDM). It doesn't help that Powerpoint is the most common tool to create them, when great, accessible web design tools like Canva, Figma, and Adobe Suite already exist, and are within our reach.

Research Findings

Public Officers voted which of the 3 steps in the eDM creation process were the most painful.

1. Design and Content Creation (70% polled)

   • Content Distillation
     • Public Officers struggle to balance informativeness with conciseness
   • Design Limitations
     • Limited creative expertise among Public Officers
     • High dependence on templates and guides
   • Communication Structure
     • Challenges in establishing appropriate tone and voice
     • Difficulty in determining optimal information hierarchy and presentation for an effective flow

   Despite content and writing challenges, interestingly, the majority do not use LLMs (e.g. Pair) to aid them.

2. Layout and Formatting (10% polled)

   • Content Organisation
     • Inefficient process of fitting content into the predefined eDM section
   • Technical Formatting
     • Poor attention to crucial formatting issues
     • Inconsistent spacing and alignment between elements

3. Distribution and Technical Constraints (20% polled)

   • Platform Limitations
     • Incompatibility between Powerpoint and Outlook HTML format causes a forced reliance on image based formats (jpeg/png)
   • Image Based Restrictions
     • Non-selectable text in distributed eDMs
     • Complex hyperlinking, requiring image slicing
     • Reduced accessibility and reader interactions

In short, the Root Causes were

1. Tool Inadequancy: Current tools don't meet modern communication needs
2. Skill Gaps: Limited design and communication expertise among users
3. Process Inefficiency: Lack of standardisation for creation workflows

Objective

To make eDM creations of any scale - simple, easy and fast for users of all communication skill levels.

Solution

Primary Goals

We decided to focus on the first two issues of the creation process - design, content and formatting. We aimed to develop an AI-powered eDM creation platform that:

• Simplifies and shortens the eDM creation process
• Accommodates users of varying skill levels
• Ensures consistent quality and professional output
• Allows user customisability and iterative prompting for content refinement

Key Solution Features

• A set of the 3 most common eDM templates created with GovTech's brand guidelines - Event Invites, Whitepapers, Product Guides
• A prompt-based LLM that generates the eDM's content based on the user's instructions
  • Users can also upload a pdf of their factsheet with their content for the LLM to use as context
  • The content and design can be altered further by manual prompting or by using the quick prompts provided
• An ensuite editing tool for users to make changes directly

Outcomes and Impact

We were able to develop an eDM that could capture the user's intentions well enough. While users tried the prototype and gave feedback, no actual impact was landed.

Future steps

Short-term

• Develop a friendlier user interface and user experience that guides the user to prompt the LLM better
• Find a way to export the eDM onto Outlook as a html file successfully

Long-term

• Host the platform on an emailing server to distribute eDMs directly on it
• Whitelist the platform for custom distribution lists to be stored and for content to be able to go up to Restricted\Non-Sensitive
• Curate a repository of approved images, logos, and icons with CMG
• Allow users to upload their Agency’s eDM templates

The Editors Behind MailMorph