From Drupal to Directus: Divine Persuasion's Journey

A growing creative digital agency founded in 2020, Divine Persuasion Studio is helping churches differentiate themselves with beautifully designed marketing, branding and digital content.

The idea for the agency was based on a need the founders noticed was common among churches and faith-based nonprofits: access to creative talent.

“Churches find it challenging to enlist volunteers with creative talent to develop branding and marketing materials or content for services and events, and oftentimes, a single staff member can’t handle all of the creative needs for the organization,” said Esmae Villa, COO & co-founder.

“We launched Divine Persuasion with the goal of providing creative services on a subscription basis for these organizations, including design, branding, video, social media management, and more."

”We use custom-built technology and an incredible network of artists to help them tell their story the way it was always meant to be told.”

Disgruntled with Drupal

Divine Persuasion’s proprietary platform aims to simplify and improve communication and project management for artists and various contractors working on their clients’ projects.

“We started by using Monday as our project management tool and paired it with various tools, including Drupal, but the process was complicated and clunky for clients,” Esmae said.

"Communication took place separately through email and text, and we knew that paying Drupal’s hosting fees would not be beneficial for us long-term.”

That’s when Michael, a software developer at Divine Persuasion, discovered Directus, the composable backend platform for powering any project.

“I found Directus just in time, after many months of struggling with Drupal, Michael said. “I came across the platform in an article that was comparing it with Strapi.”

While the team was reluctant to scrap their initial setup in Drupal, Michael was convinced Directus was the better way to go.

“Michael told our CEO, ‘Give me three days and I’ll show you what it can do,’” Esmae said.

“He was able to build in three days with Directus what took three months to build in Drupal.”

Esmae added that Directus provides the right combination of customization and ease of use – something missing in other platforms.

“Those platforms that were easy to use didn’t provide the power and customization we needed, and vice versa,” Esmae said. “Directus offers the best of both worlds.”

One hub, many potential spokes

With Directus fueling the application, everything is consolidated and easily accessible. Clients can request projects and view status and progress, and the creative professionals use it to view and manage their work.

“Everything is automated to keep the process moving,” Esmae said.

According to Esmae, the ultimate goal is to build out a fully customized CRM and continue to expand it to house all of their in-house processes, with Directus as a hub, tying multiple platforms together.

“The integration capabilities Directus offers are stronger and easier than we’ve found in other platforms, like Hubspot or Salesforce,” Esmae said.

Consolidated workflow enables 20-30% time savings

Using Directus has helped Divine Persuasion to eliminate information silos by enabling staff and contractors to communicate and collaborate more efficiently and effectively.

“Before we started using Directus, our operations team was doing a lot of manual work, which was very time-consuming and error-prone,” she said.

“With Directus, we can view and update project information automatically, which saves my team hours per day while eliminating errors.”

Additionally, Directus empowers content creators with unified dashboards and a more holistic view of work in progress.

“Our artists can customize their dashboards however they want and work in a way that suits them best,” she said.

“That’s a huge time saver for teams – to the tune of 20-30% of their daily work.”

Leveraging automation to handle manual tasks

One key feature Michael and his team use often is Directus Automate, which supports custom, event-driven data processing and task automation.

“We have hundreds of flows configured in the platform to automate different processes,” Michael said.

“It’s simple enough for non-technical users, and it’s extremely flexible, too.”

Building the future and amazing client work with Directus

In the near future, that flexibility will enable Divine Persuasion to lead the charge of modernizing and digitizing the way churches plan their services by building a project management platform and making it available to clients on a subscription basis.

“Directus is constantly innovating, and that aligns perfectly with our philosophy,” Esmae said.

“It’s great to partner with a company that has the same goals for continuous innovation and can grow along with us.”

To learn more about Divine Persuasion Studio and see the incredible work they do, check out dps.team. Curious about how Directus can benefit your business or agency? Book some time for a 1:1 session with our team.