A Glossary of Key Keap Automation & Campaign Elements for HR & Recruiting Professionals

In the fast-paced world of HR and recruiting, leveraging technology to streamline processes is no longer optional—it’s essential. Keap, a powerful CRM and marketing automation platform, offers a robust suite of tools that, when understood and applied strategically, can transform how HR professionals attract, engage, and onboard top talent. This glossary defines key Keap-specific and general automation terms, explaining their relevance and practical application for HR and recruiting leaders seeking to optimize their workflows and enhance the candidate experience.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

At its core, a CRM system in the HR context is a Candidate Relationship Management system. While Keap is typically used for customer sales and marketing, HR professionals can adapt it to manage the entire candidate lifecycle, from initial outreach to post-hire engagement. It serves as a centralized database for all candidate information, communications, and interactions. For HR and recruiting, a CRM like Keap means no more lost resumes or scattered notes; every interaction, every email, and every status update is meticulously recorded, providing a single source of truth for each candidate. This allows for personalized follow-ups, efficient tracking of applications, and a cohesive candidate experience, crucial for attracting and retaining top talent.

Automation

Automation in Keap refers to the use of predefined rules and actions to execute tasks without manual intervention. For HR and recruiting, this translates into significant time savings and reduced administrative burden. Imagine automatically sending a confirmation email when a candidate applies, scheduling an initial phone screen based on their availability, or triggering a series of onboarding emails once an offer is accepted. Keap’s automation capabilities enable HR teams to build sophisticated workflows that handle repetitive tasks, ensuring consistency, reducing human error, and freeing up recruiters to focus on high-value activities like candidate engagement and strategic talent sourcing. It’s about doing more with less, systematically and reliably.

Campaign

A campaign in Keap is a strategic, multi-step series of automated communications and actions designed to achieve a specific goal. In recruiting, a campaign could be designed to nurture passive candidates, guide applicants through the interview process, or automate post-hire onboarding. Campaigns leverage various elements like emails, tasks, and decision points to deliver personalized experiences. For HR, this means creating structured pipelines for different talent segments. For example, a “New Applicant Campaign” could send an initial acknowledgment, a link to a skills assessment, and schedule a follow-up task for the recruiter, all orchestrated automatically based on candidate behavior or status updates within Keap.

Sequence

A sequence is a specific, time-bound series of automated communications, typically emails, that are part of a larger Keap campaign. Sequences are ideal for drip campaigns, where a series of messages are sent out at predetermined intervals to a segmented audience. In an HR context, a sequence could be used to nurture candidates over several weeks with company culture insights, testimonials, and job opening updates. Another application might be for onboarding, where new hires receive a series of welcome emails over their first month, providing essential information, helpful resources, and introductions to key team members. Sequences ensure consistent, timely communication without requiring constant manual effort.

Tag

Tags are labels that you apply to contacts (candidates or employees) within Keap to segment them based on shared characteristics, interests, or actions. They are fundamental for organizing your database and triggering automations. For HR, tags are invaluable for categorizing candidates by skill set, industry experience, desired role, application status (e.g., “Interviewed,” “Offer Sent”), or even engagement level (“Highly Engaged Talent”). These tags can then be used to send highly targeted communications, ensuring that candidates receive relevant job alerts or company updates, thereby improving engagement and conversion rates, and making your recruitment efforts more personalized and effective.

Webform

A Keap webform is an online form designed to capture information from visitors to your website or landing pages. For HR and recruiting, webforms are critical tools for lead generation and data collection. They can be used for job applications, talent network sign-ups, event registrations (e.g., career fairs, webinars), or requests for information about specific roles. By integrating directly with Keap, submitted webform data automatically creates or updates candidate records, triggers follow-up automations, and assigns relevant tags. This streamlines the initial data entry process, reduces manual administrative tasks, and ensures that candidate information is immediately actionable within your CRM.

Landing Page

A landing page is a standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or recruiting campaign. Unlike regular website pages, landing pages are designed with a single focus: to convert visitors into leads or applicants by encouraging a specific action, such as filling out a Keap webform. In HR, landing pages can be used for specific job postings, to promote career events, or to capture interest for a future talent pool. By removing distractions and focusing on a clear call to action, landing pages maximize the effectiveness of your recruitment advertising, ensuring that candidates arriving from job boards or social media are funneled directly into your Keap system, ready for automated engagement.

Email Broadcast

An email broadcast in Keap is a one-time email sent to a specific segment of your contacts (candidates or employees). Unlike automated campaign emails, broadcasts are typically used for timely announcements or urgent communications that don’t fit into a predefined sequence. For HR, this could involve sending out urgent job alerts for hard-to-fill positions, announcing changes to benefits, sharing company news, or inviting a segmented group of past applicants to a virtual career fair. Broadcasts are powerful for disseminating information quickly and broadly while still allowing for segmentation to ensure relevance, preventing “email fatigue” and maximizing the impact of your communications.

Pipeline/Opportunity

In Keap, a Pipeline (often referred to as an “Opportunity” in a sales context) is a visual representation of the stages a contact moves through from initial interest to a desired outcome. For HR and recruiting, this translates directly to a candidate pipeline, tracking applicants through various stages: “Application Received,” “Phone Screen,” “Interview Scheduled,” “Offer Extended,” and “Hired.” This visual workflow allows recruiters and hiring managers to quickly see where each candidate stands, identify bottlenecks, and ensure no candidate falls through the cracks. Keap’s pipeline management tools enable seamless progression and trigger automated actions based on stage changes, keeping the hiring process efficient and organized.

Custom Fields

Custom fields in Keap allow you to store unique, specific data points about your contacts beyond the standard CRM fields. For HR and recruiting, this functionality is indispensable for capturing detailed candidate information that is highly relevant to hiring decisions and compliance. Examples include desired salary, specific skill sets (e.g., “Proficient in Python,” “Fluent in Spanish”), visa status, preferred work location, or availability dates. By creating and utilizing custom fields, HR teams can build comprehensive candidate profiles, perform advanced segmentation, and personalize communications based on granular data, making the Keap CRM a powerful, tailored tool for talent management.

Candidate Scoring (Lead Scoring adapted)

Adapted from “Lead Scoring” in sales, Candidate Scoring in Keap involves assigning a numerical value to candidates based on their engagement with your recruitment efforts and their qualifications. Points can be awarded for actions like opening job emails, visiting career pages, submitting an application, or possessing specific skills indicated in custom fields. A higher score signifies a more engaged or qualified candidate, helping recruiters prioritize their outreach. This system allows HR teams to focus their valuable time on candidates who are most likely to convert into hires, making the recruitment process more efficient and data-driven, rather than relying solely on intuition.

Internal Forms

Internal forms in Keap are custom forms accessible only to your team members, designed to standardize internal processes and data entry. In an HR context, these forms can be used by recruiters or hiring managers to update candidate records, provide interview feedback, request background checks, or log specific interactions. For example, after a phone screen, a recruiter could fill out an internal form to capture key insights and update the candidate’s status, automatically triggering the next step in the hiring campaign. This ensures consistent data capture, reduces administrative overhead, and maintains a clean, up-to-date candidate database within Keap.

API (Application Programming Interface) Integration

An API integration allows Keap to communicate and exchange data with other software applications, creating a seamless ecosystem of tools. For HR and recruiting, this means connecting Keap with your Applicant Tracking System (ATS), HRIS, assessment platforms, or payroll systems. For example, a candidate could apply through your ATS, and their data is automatically pushed into Keap for nurturing and campaign management. Once hired, their data could then be sent to your HRIS for onboarding. API integrations eliminate manual data entry, reduce errors, and create a single, synchronized source of truth across all your HR tech, enhancing efficiency and data integrity.

Decision Diamond

The Decision Diamond is a powerful conditional logic element within Keap campaigns, allowing automations to branch into different paths based on specific criteria or contact behavior. For HR, this enables highly personalized and dynamic candidate journeys. For instance, after a candidate submits an application, a Decision Diamond could check if they have a “Technical Skills” tag; if yes, they receive an invitation for a coding assessment, if no, they receive a general “next steps” email. This ensures that candidates receive relevant communications and actions tailored to their profile or engagement, making the recruitment process smarter and more responsive.

Goal

In Keap campaigns, a Goal is a specific trigger that initiates an automation sequence or moves a contact to a different part of a campaign. Goals are fundamental for building responsive and user-driven workflows. For HR, common goals include a candidate filling out a webform (e.g., submitting a job application), clicking a specific link in an email (e.g., viewing a job description), or having a particular tag applied (e.g., “Interview Scheduled”). When a candidate completes a defined goal, Keap automatically triggers the next set of actions, ensuring timely follow-up and progress through the recruitment funnel without any manual intervention required from your team.

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