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

In the fast-paced world of HR and recruiting, efficient data management isn’t just a best practice—it’s a competitive advantage. Leveraging a robust CRM like Keap effectively means understanding its core terminology and how each component contributes to streamlined operations, better candidate experiences, and improved client relationships. This glossary provides essential Keap data management definitions, specifically tailored to help HR and recruiting professionals optimize their processes, eliminate manual errors, and scale their impact through intelligent automation.

Keap CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Keap CRM is a comprehensive platform designed to manage and automate customer and client interactions throughout the entire lifecycle. For HR and recruiting professionals, Keap serves as a central hub for talent relationship management (TRM), client relationship management, and sales pipeline tracking. It allows teams to store detailed candidate profiles, track client communications, manage job requisitions, and automate follow-up sequences. By consolidating data and interactions, Keap helps HR teams personalize candidate outreach, streamline onboarding processes for new hires or clients, and ensure no valuable lead or candidate falls through the cracks, ultimately driving more efficient and effective recruitment outcomes.

Contact Record

A Contact Record is the fundamental unit of information within Keap, representing an individual (whether a candidate, client, lead, or vendor). Each record aggregates all available data related to that person, including contact details, communication history, notes, tasks, custom field data, and applied tags. For recruiters, a comprehensive contact record allows for a 360-degree view of a candidate’s journey—from initial application to placement and beyond. Accurate and well-maintained contact records are crucial for personalized communication, segmenting talent pools, and ensuring that every interaction is relevant and timely, fostering stronger relationships and improving hiring efficiency.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields are user-defined data fields that extend Keap’s standard contact information, allowing organizations to capture specific, unique details essential to their operations. In HR and recruiting, these fields are invaluable for tracking highly specific candidate qualifications (e.g., “Years of Experience in Python,” “Desired Salary Range,” “Interview Feedback Score”) or client-specific requirements (e.g., “Preferred Industry Vertical,” “Average Time-to-Fill”). Strategically implemented custom fields ensure that all critical data points are consistently captured and easily searchable, enabling sophisticated segmentation, targeted outreach, and automated actions based on highly granular information, which is pivotal for effective talent matching.

Tags

Tags are flexible labels applied to contact records to categorize, segment, and organize individuals based on various criteria. They are incredibly powerful for creating dynamic groups within your Keap database. For HR and recruiting, tags can denote candidate skills (“Project Manager,” “Java Developer”), lead status (“Hired,” “Rejected,” “Warm Lead”), client type (“Enterprise Client,” “Small Business”), or engagement level (“Attended Webinar,” “Opened Email”). Tags are the engine behind targeted communication and automation; they allow recruiters to trigger specific campaigns for segmented groups or quickly pull lists for targeted outreach, significantly enhancing the relevance and efficiency of recruitment marketing and candidate nurturing efforts.

Campaigns

Campaigns in Keap are automated sequences of actions designed to nurture contacts through specific stages of a journey. These can include sending automated emails, assigning tasks to team members, updating contact records, or applying/removing tags, all triggered by defined events (e.g., form submission, tag application). For HR, campaigns are instrumental in automating the candidate onboarding process, sending follow-up communications after interviews, or nurturing passive talent pools over time. For recruiting agencies, campaigns can manage client onboarding, send regular updates, or re-engage past clients. By automating these touchpoints, campaigns ensure consistent communication, reduce manual workload, and improve the overall experience for candidates and clients alike.

Sequences

While the term ‘Campaigns’ is now more commonly used to describe Keap’s comprehensive automation builder, ‘Sequences’ traditionally referred to a series of automated emails or tasks delivered over time, often triggered by a specific event. In modern Keap, Sequences are often components within a larger Campaign. For HR and recruiting, a sequence might be a drip campaign of educational emails sent to new hires during their first 90 days, or a series of reminders for candidates to complete an assessment. Understanding sequences helps professionals design logical, time-based communication flows that keep candidates engaged and informed, or nurture client relationships with valuable content, ensuring a structured and timely approach to communication.

Automation Builder

The Automation Builder is Keap’s intuitive visual interface for designing and implementing complex automated workflows. It allows users to drag-and-drop elements like web forms, email sends, decision diamonds, and sequences to create sophisticated multi-step processes. For HR and recruiting, this tool is transformative. You can automate resume parsing, send customized responses to job applicants, schedule interviews, create new client onboarding tasks, or trigger internal notifications when a candidate reaches a specific stage. The Automation Builder empowers teams to eliminate repetitive manual tasks, reduce human error, and ensure a consistent, scalable approach to managing both candidate and client lifecycles, saving significant time and resources.

Lead Source

Lead Source is a critical data point that identifies where a contact (candidate or potential client) initially entered your Keap system. Examples include “Website Form,” “LinkedIn,” “Referral,” “Job Board XYZ,” or “Networking Event.” Accurately tracking lead sources is vital for HR and recruiting to understand the effectiveness of different recruitment channels and marketing efforts. By attributing hires or client acquisitions to their originating source, organizations can strategically allocate resources, optimize their recruitment advertising spend, and focus on the most profitable and efficient channels. This data-driven approach ensures that recruitment strategies are continually refined for maximum ROI.

Opportunity

An Opportunity in Keap represents a potential sale, project, or engagement that is actively being pursued. In a recruiting context, an opportunity can track a specific job requisition that needs to be filled, a new client project for executive search, or even a candidate being actively managed for placement. It typically moves through various stages (e.g., “Sourcing,” “Interviewing,” “Offer Extended,” “Closed Won”). Managing opportunities allows HR and recruiting teams to visualize their pipeline, forecast placements, track progress against KPIs, and identify bottlenecks. It provides a structured way to manage the ‘sales’ aspect of recruitment, ensuring no potential placement or client engagement is overlooked.

Web Forms

Web Forms are customizable online forms created within Keap that can be embedded on websites or used as standalone landing pages to capture information from visitors. For HR and recruiting, web forms are indispensable. They are used for job applications, requests for information, candidate interest forms, consultation booking forms for clients, or event registrations. When a form is submitted, Keap automatically creates a new contact record or updates an existing one, and can trigger subsequent automations like sending a confirmation email, applying specific tags, or initiating an onboarding campaign. They are a primary gateway for new data entry and workflow initiation.

API Integration

API (Application Programming Interface) Integration refers to the capability of Keap to connect and communicate directly with other software applications (e.g., Applicant Tracking Systems, HR Information Systems, accounting software, communication platforms). This allows for the seamless exchange of data between systems, eliminating manual data entry and ensuring data consistency across your tech stack. For HR and recruiting, API integrations are crucial for building a “single source of truth,” connecting Keap with job boards for automatic posting, syncing candidate data from an ATS, or integrating with a background check service. This interoperability is key to creating truly automated, error-free operational workflows.

Data Migration

Data Migration is the process of transferring data from one system or format to another, often when adopting a new CRM or upgrading existing software. For HR and recruiting, this typically involves moving candidate databases, client lists, historical communications, and custom field data from a legacy system into Keap. This process requires meticulous planning, data cleansing, and validation to ensure accuracy and integrity. Improper data migration can lead to lost information, duplicate records, or corrupted data, severely impacting operational efficiency. Effective migration ensures that all historical context and valuable data are preserved and readily available in the new system.

Data Backup

Data Backup involves creating copies of your Keap data to ensure its safety and availability in case of data loss due to human error, system failure, or cyberattack. For HR and recruiting, where sensitive candidate and client information is paramount, robust data backup strategies are non-negotiable. Regular backups protect against losing vital candidate histories, client agreements, or critical communication logs. Companies like 4Spot Consulting specialize in implementing automated, incremental backup solutions (e.g., via CRM-Backup.com) that provide peace of mind and ensure business continuity, safeguarding your most valuable assets: your data and relationships.

Data Segmentation

Data Segmentation is the process of dividing your Keap contact database into smaller, more specific groups based on shared characteristics, behaviors, or criteria (e.g., tags, custom field values, engagement history). For HR and recruiting, segmentation is critical for tailoring communications and strategies. You might segment candidates by skill set, location, experience level, or preferred industry; clients by industry, size, or service level. This allows for highly personalized outreach, ensuring that candidates receive relevant job opportunities and clients receive targeted service offerings, leading to higher engagement, better conversion rates, and more efficient resource allocation across your talent and client pools.

Reporting & Analytics

Reporting and Analytics in Keap refer to the tools and features that allow HR and recruiting professionals to track, measure, and analyze their performance. This includes metrics such as candidate conversion rates, client acquisition costs, campaign effectiveness (open rates, click-through rates), pipeline velocity, and time-to-hire. By leveraging Keap’s reporting capabilities, teams can gain actionable insights into what’s working and what isn’t, identify bottlenecks in their processes, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their strategies. Regular analysis of these reports is essential for continuous improvement, demonstrating ROI, and scaling recruitment and HR operations effectively.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Unbreakable Keap Data: Mastering Incremental Backups for HR & Recruiting