A Glossary of Key Keap Contact Management Terms for HR & Recruiting Professionals
Navigating any powerful CRM requires a solid understanding of its core terminology, and Keap is no exception. For HR and recruiting professionals, mastering Keap’s specific language is not just about familiarity—it’s about unlocking the platform’s full potential to streamline candidate management, automate onboarding processes, and maintain a meticulously organized database. This glossary provides clear, actionable definitions for essential Keap terms, explaining their relevance and application in the context of modern HR and recruiting workflows, especially when integrated with automation strategies. Understanding these concepts will empower you to leverage Keap more effectively, saving valuable time and reducing manual effort in your daily operations.
Contact Record
A Contact Record in Keap is the fundamental unit of information for an individual or company. It consolidates all data points related to a specific contact, including personal details, communication history, notes, tasks, purchase history, and custom fields. For HR and recruiting firms, a Contact Record serves as the comprehensive profile for a candidate, client, or hiring manager. This centralized record is critical for maintaining a single source of truth, allowing recruiters to quickly access application details, interview feedback, engagement history, and specific requirements. Automating updates to these records, such as status changes or new document uploads, ensures that your team always has the most current information, preventing data silos and improving decision-making speed.
Tag
Tags in Keap are descriptive labels that you can apply to Contact Records, enabling powerful segmentation and organization. Unlike fixed fields, tags are highly flexible and can categorize contacts based on attributes, actions, interests, or stages in a process. In HR and recruiting, tags are invaluable for segmenting your talent pool—think “Java Developer,” “Passive Candidate,” “Interviewed – Round 1,” “Client – Tech Startup,” or “Onboarding Complete.” These tags allow for targeted communication, automated workflow triggers, and precise reporting. For instance, applying a “New Application” tag can automatically enroll a candidate into an initial screening sequence, while a “Hired” tag can trigger an onboarding automation, demonstrating their critical role in efficiency and personalization.
Campaign
A Keap Campaign is a sophisticated, multi-step marketing and sales automation sequence designed to guide contacts through a predefined journey. It can combine emails, internal tasks, decision points, and other actions based on a contact’s behavior. For HR and recruiting, Campaigns are incredibly versatile. You can design a “Candidate Nurture Campaign” to engage passive candidates with relevant content, an “Applicant Onboarding Campaign” to manage the post-offer acceptance steps, or a “Client Follow-up Campaign” for hiring managers. These automated journeys ensure consistent engagement, timely follow-ups, and a structured process that reduces manual intervention, freeing up recruiters to focus on high-value interactions rather than repetitive administrative tasks.
Sequence
A Sequence is a core component within a Keap Campaign, representing a series of automated actions executed in a specific order. Sequences are primarily used for drip marketing, delivering timed messages and actions. While Campaigns encompass the broader journey with multiple entry points and outcomes, Sequences are the building blocks that define a specific automated path within that journey. In an HR context, a “Candidate Interview Sequence” might send an interview confirmation email, a reminder email, and then trigger an internal task for the recruiter to review notes. Sequences allow for precise control over the timing and nature of automated communication, ensuring candidates and clients receive relevant information exactly when they need it, contributing to a professional and organized experience.
Broadcast
A Keap Broadcast is a one-time email or SMS message sent to a specific segment of your contacts. Unlike Campaigns or Sequences, which are designed for automated, ongoing journeys, Broadcasts are used for immediate announcements, newsletters, or urgent communications. For HR and recruiting professionals, Broadcasts are useful for sending out job alerts to a segment of qualified candidates, announcing company news to newly hired employees, or sharing urgent updates with a pool of active applicants. This tool allows for rapid dissemination of information to targeted groups without setting up a full automation, making it ideal for time-sensitive or ad-hoc communications while maintaining the ability to track engagement metrics.
Automation Builder
The Automation Builder in Keap is the visual interface where users design and implement their automated campaigns and workflows. It uses a drag-and-drop mechanism, allowing you to connect various elements like web forms, tags, emails, sequences, and decision points to create complex, logic-driven automations. For HR and recruiting, this intuitive tool is where you bring your process maps to life. You can build automations for everything from initial application processing, automated resume parsing triggers, interview scheduling confirmations, to post-hire feedback loops. The Automation Builder empowers professionals to visualize and construct efficient, error-reducing workflows that ensure no candidate or client falls through the cracks, dramatically improving operational consistency and scalability.
Lead Score
Lead Scoring in Keap is a system that assigns numerical values to contacts based on their engagement, demographic information, and behaviors, indicating their level of interest or qualification. Contacts accumulate points for actions like opening emails, visiting specific web pages, filling out forms, or having particular tags. For recruiting, this translates to “Candidate Scoring.” A candidate might gain points for having relevant skills (indicated by tags), applying for multiple positions, or engaging with career-related content. High lead scores can automatically trigger actions, such as notifying a recruiter for immediate follow-up or moving a candidate to a ‘hot prospect’ pipeline, prioritizing high-potential individuals and optimizing recruiter time.
Opportunity
In Keap, an Opportunity represents a potential sale or, in the context of HR and recruiting, a potential hire or client engagement. Opportunities are tracked through a sales pipeline (or hiring pipeline) and have a specific value, stage, and probability of closing. For recruiting firms, an Opportunity could be a specific job requisition being actively worked on, with a candidate moving through stages like “Application Received,” “Interview Scheduled,” “Offer Extended,” and “Hired.” Managing Opportunities in Keap allows recruiters to visualize their active workload, forecast hiring completions, and focus their efforts on moving candidates through the pipeline efficiently. This structured approach ensures every potential placement is actively managed and progressed.
Pipeline
A Pipeline in Keap is a visual representation of the stages an Opportunity moves through from initial contact to successful closure (e.g., a hire or client win). Each stage in the pipeline indicates a specific point in the process, providing clarity on where each Opportunity stands. For HR and recruiting, a Pipeline is an indispensable tool for managing the hiring process. Stages might include “New Applicant,” “Resume Review,” “Phone Screen,” “On-Site Interview,” “Reference Check,” “Offer Made,” and “Hired.” Visualizing these stages helps recruiters identify bottlenecks, predict timelines, and prioritize tasks, ensuring a smooth and transparent journey for both candidates and hiring managers. It’s a critical component for tracking progress and ensuring accountability.
Web Form
A Keap Web Form is a customizable input form that can be embedded on a website or used as a standalone landing page to capture contact information and trigger automations. When a contact submits a Web Form, their data is automatically added to Keap, and predefined actions can occur. For HR and recruiting, Web Forms are vital for capturing job applications, interest forms for talent pools, client inquiry forms, or sign-ups for career newsletters. Submitting a “Job Application” form could automatically create a new Contact Record, apply an “Applicant” tag, and enroll the candidate into an initial screening campaign, greatly automating the initial stages of candidate intake and ensuring no application goes unnoticed.
Landing Page
A Keap Landing Page is a dedicated web page designed with a specific call to action, often featuring a Web Form, to capture leads or drive specific actions. Unlike a regular website page, landing pages are optimized for conversion, minimizing distractions. For HR and recruiting, Landing Pages are highly effective for various purposes: creating a dedicated page for a specific job opening, promoting a career event, or offering a lead magnet (e.g., “5 Tips for Your Next Interview”) in exchange for contact information. When integrated with Keap’s automation capabilities, submission on a Landing Page can instantly trigger follow-up emails, assign tasks to recruiters, and segment contacts for targeted outreach, streamlining lead generation and qualification efforts.
Custom Field
Custom Fields in Keap allow you to store specific pieces of information about your contacts that are not covered by the standard fields. You can create text fields, dropdowns, checkboxes, dates, and more, tailoring your CRM to your unique business needs. For HR and recruiting, Custom Fields are essential for capturing detailed candidate data that goes beyond basic contact info. Examples include “Desired Salary,” “Years of Experience,” “Notice Period,” “Visa Status,” “Preferred Location,” or “Skills List.” These fields enable highly granular segmentation and search capabilities, ensuring recruiters can quickly find candidates with precise qualifications, and allowing for the storage of critical information that might otherwise be overlooked, enhancing data quality and searchability.
Merge Field
Merge Fields (also known as custom fields, smart fields, or personalized fields) are placeholders in Keap email templates, letters, or other communications that automatically pull data from a Contact Record when the communication is sent. For example, `~Contact.FirstName~` would be replaced with the contact’s actual first name. For HR and recruiting, Merge Fields are crucial for personalizing communication at scale. You can create generic email templates for interview confirmations, offer letters, or onboarding instructions, and then use merge fields to automatically insert the candidate’s name, job title, start date, hiring manager’s name, or other relevant details. This saves significant time, reduces manual errors, and ensures a personalized, professional experience for every candidate and client.
User
A Keap User is an individual with access to your Keap application, typically a member of your team. Each user has a unique login and can be assigned specific permissions and roles, controlling what they can view and edit within the system. For HR and recruiting firms, managing Users effectively is vital for team collaboration and data security. Recruiters, HR managers, and administrative staff can each have their own user accounts, allowing them to access candidate records, manage pipelines, send communications, and execute automations. Granting appropriate permissions ensures that sensitive candidate and client data is protected, while still enabling the team to work collaboratively and efficiently within the Keap environment.
Referral Partner
In Keap, a Referral Partner is a type of Contact Record that can be associated with a specific referral program or commission structure. Keap offers tools to manage referral programs, track leads generated by partners, and automate payouts. For recruiting firms, this feature can be incredibly valuable for incentivizing employee referrals or building a network of external sourcers. You can track which Referral Partner brings in which candidate or client, monitor their success rates, and automate thank-you messages or commission calculations. Leveraging the Referral Partner functionality within Keap helps expand your talent pool, reduce cost-per-hire, and build stronger relationships with your key advocates, streamlining the entire referral management process.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Keap Data Recovery Best Practices: Minimizing Duplicates for HR & Recruiting Firms
