A Glossary of Key Terms in Keap Data Management for HR & Recruiting

In the fast-paced worlds of HR and recruiting, efficient data management within your CRM is not just an advantage—it’s a necessity. Keap, a powerful CRM and marketing automation platform, offers extensive capabilities for organizing contact information, tracking candidate journeys, and automating crucial workflows. However, to truly leverage its power, understanding the specific data fields and their underlying structure is paramount. This glossary provides HR and recruiting professionals with clear, authoritative definitions of key Keap terms, explaining their practical application to help you streamline operations, enhance data integrity, and build more effective automation strategies.

Contact Record

At the core of Keap, a Contact Record is the digital profile for an individual, storing all pertinent information related to a candidate, employee, client, or lead. For HR and recruiting professionals, this record is a comprehensive hub containing details such as personal information, contact history, application status, interview notes, and even compensation expectations. Properly structured Contact Records are vital for personalizing communications, segmenting your talent pool, and ensuring that every interaction, from initial outreach to onboarding, is tracked and managed efficiently. Maintaining clean and complete Contact Records is the foundation for effective candidate relationship management and data-driven recruiting decisions.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields in Keap allow you to extend the standard contact information with unique data points specific to your HR or recruiting processes. Unlike universal fields like email or phone number, custom fields can capture specialized data such as “Desired Salary Range,” “Years of Experience,” “Certification Status,” or “Preferred Interview Availability.” These fields are indispensable for tailoring your CRM to your exact needs, enabling deeper segmentation of candidates, automating conditional actions based on specific criteria, and ensuring that all relevant applicant data is housed centrally. Strategic use of Custom Fields is key to building a robust and highly personalized recruiting database.

Campaigns

Keap Campaigns are automated sequences of actions designed to nurture leads, engage candidates, or manage various HR processes over time. A campaign can include a series of emails, tasks for recruiters, internal notifications, or even conditional logic based on contact behavior (e.g., opening an email, submitting a form). For HR and recruiting, campaigns are invaluable for automating candidate onboarding, follow-up communications post-interview, re-engagement strategies for passive talent, or even internal HR communications for new hires. They ensure consistent messaging, timely actions, and reduce manual effort, allowing recruiters to focus on high-value interactions.

Automation (Legacy vs. Advanced)

Keap offers two primary automation builders: the legacy Campaign Builder and the newer Advanced Automation builder. Both allow you to create rules and sequences that automatically perform actions based on specific triggers (e.g., a tag being applied, a form submission). In HR, automation can be used to send automated interview confirmations, assign new leads to recruiters, trigger background checks, or update candidate statuses. Understanding the nuances of each builder helps HR professionals choose the right tool for complex workflows, ensuring efficient and scalable processes that minimize manual intervention and human error in the recruiting lifecycle.

Lead Score

Lead Score in Keap is a numerical value assigned to a contact, indicating their engagement and potential fit based on predefined criteria. While often used for sales, in HR and recruiting, a “Candidate Score” can be implemented to prioritize applicants based on factors like website activity, email engagement, job application history, or specific field values (e.g., years of experience). A higher score could signal a more engaged or qualified candidate, prompting recruiters to prioritize outreach or schedule an interview faster. Implementing a robust lead scoring system helps recruiting teams focus their efforts on the most promising talent, increasing efficiency and reducing time-to-hire.

Opportunity

In Keap, an Opportunity represents a potential sales deal, but for HR and recruiting, it can be repurposed to track the progression of a candidate through the hiring pipeline for a specific role. Each opportunity would be tied to a contact and move through various stages, such as “Application Received,” “Phone Screen,” “Interview Scheduled,” “Offer Extended,” and “Hired.” This allows recruiters to visually manage their active requisitions, track conversion rates at each stage, and forecast hiring metrics. Leveraging opportunities brings a structured, sales-like pipeline management approach to the recruiting process, providing clarity and actionable insights.

Company Record

While often overlooked in individual-centric recruiting, Keap’s Company Record is crucial for organizations dealing with corporate clients, staffing agencies, or when managing multiple contacts within a single client organization. It stores details about a company, allowing you to associate multiple Contact Records (e.g., different hiring managers or departmental leads) to a single corporate entity. For HR, this is invaluable for managing vendor relationships, client accounts in a staffing context, or tracking hiring trends within specific organizations. Maintaining accurate Company Records ensures a holistic view of your organizational relationships and simplifies account-based recruitment strategies.

User Fields

User Fields in Keap are custom fields specifically tied to the users of your Keap application (your team members), rather than to contacts. For HR and recruiting, these fields can store essential information about your recruiters, such as their specializations (“IT Recruitment,” “Executive Search”), their current caseload, or geographical areas of focus. This data can then be used in automations to dynamically assign new leads or tasks to the appropriate recruiter based on specific criteria, ensuring efficient workload distribution and leveraging individual expertise. Properly configuring User Fields optimizes internal team management and collaboration.

Web Form

A Web Form in Keap is a customizable online form designed to capture information from website visitors or applicants and automatically add it to your Keap CRM. For HR and recruiting, web forms are indispensable for job applications, resume submissions, interest forms for talent communities, or event registrations. When a candidate completes a form, their data is instantly collected and can trigger various automations, such as sending a confirmation email, applying specific tags, or initiating an interview campaign. High-quality web forms are the gateway for capturing new talent data and kickstarting automated recruiting workflows.

API (Application Programming Interface)

An API in Keap provides a programmatic way for external applications and systems to communicate with your Keap account. For HR and recruiting professionals, understanding Keap’s API means unlocking advanced integration possibilities beyond standard connectors. This allows you to sync data with applicant tracking systems (ATS), HRIS platforms, background check services, or custom internal tools, ensuring a seamless flow of information across your tech stack. Leveraging the API is critical for building a “single source of truth” for candidate data, eliminating manual data entry, and creating highly customized, end-to-end automation solutions.

Integration

Integration refers to the process of connecting Keap with other software applications to share data and automate workflows. In HR and recruiting, integrations are vital for creating a cohesive ecosystem. This might involve connecting Keap with email marketing platforms, calendar scheduling tools (e.g., Calendly), video conferencing platforms (e.g., Zoom), or payroll systems. Effective integrations ensure that candidate data is consistent across all platforms, reducing manual data entry, improving data accuracy, and enabling complex, multi-system automations that streamline the entire candidate journey from application to onboarding and beyond.

Data Migration

Data Migration is the process of transferring data from one system (e.g., an old CRM, spreadsheets, or another ATS) into Keap. For HR and recruiting, this often occurs when adopting Keap for the first time or consolidating existing data sources. A successful data migration is crucial for preserving historical candidate information, maintaining data integrity, and ensuring a smooth transition without losing valuable insights. Proper planning, data cleaning, and mapping old fields to new Keap fields are essential steps to ensure that all your recruiting data is accurately and efficiently brought into your new system, setting the stage for effective use.

Segmentation

Segmentation in Keap is the process of dividing your contact database into smaller, more specific groups based on shared characteristics. For HR and recruiting, this means grouping candidates by skills, experience level, location, desired role, application status, or engagement level. Effective segmentation allows for highly targeted communications, personalized campaigns, and precise talent searches. Instead of sending generic messages, you can craft specific outreach to passive Java developers in a particular region or send tailored onboarding materials to new hires in specific departments. Segmentation is key to maximizing engagement and conversion rates in your recruiting efforts.

Reporting

Keap’s Reporting features provide insights into your CRM data and campaign performance, offering a data-driven view of your HR and recruiting operations. Reports can track metrics such as candidate source effectiveness, campaign open and click rates, pipeline progression, time-to-hire, or conversion rates at various stages. For HR and recruiting professionals, robust reporting is essential for identifying bottlenecks in the hiring process, evaluating the success of recruiting campaigns, justifying resource allocation, and making informed strategic decisions to optimize talent acquisition efforts. Understanding and utilizing Keap’s reporting tools is fundamental to continuous improvement.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Keap Selective Contact Field Restore: Essential Data Protection for HR & Recruiting

By Jack DeePublished On: December 18, 2025