A Glossary of Key Terms in Keap CRM for HR & Recruiting Professionals

In the dynamic world of HR and recruiting, leveraging robust CRM platforms like Keap can dramatically streamline operations, enhance candidate experiences, and improve data management. For professionals looking to optimize their talent acquisition and management processes through automation, understanding Keap’s core terminology is essential. This glossary provides clear, authoritative definitions tailored to how these terms apply in an HR or recruiting context, empowering you to better utilize Keap’s powerful features to save time, reduce human error, and scale your efforts.

Contact Record

A Contact Record in Keap is the central repository for all information related to an individual—be it a candidate, an employee, a client, or a vendor. It aggregates their personal details, communication history, linked tasks, appointments, and any custom data points. For HR and recruiting professionals, a well-maintained contact record is paramount for managing candidate pipelines, tracking interview stages, documenting offer letters, and even onboarding new hires. Automation can enrich these records automatically from web forms or integrated systems, ensuring a ‘single source of truth’ for every person you interact with, reducing manual data entry and preventing critical information silos across the hiring lifecycle.

Campaign Builder

The Campaign Builder is Keap’s visual drag-and-drop interface for designing automated marketing and communication workflows. It allows users to map out sequences of emails, texts, tasks, and internal processes triggered by specific actions or conditions. For HR and recruiting, the Campaign Builder is a game-changer. Imagine automating the entire candidate journey: from initial application confirmation, through interview scheduling reminders, post-interview feedback forms, offer letter delivery, to a multi-step onboarding sequence. This not only ensures a consistent and professional candidate experience but also drastically reduces the manual administrative burden on your recruiting team, allowing them to focus on high-value interactions.

Automation

Automation in Keap refers to the system’s ability to perform actions automatically based on predefined triggers and conditions. This can include sending emails, applying tags, assigning tasks, updating contact records, or initiating external integrations. For HR and recruiting, automation is the key to efficiency and scalability. It transforms repetitive, time-consuming tasks into seamless, background processes. Examples include automatically scheduling initial phone screens when a candidate meets specific criteria, sending welcome kits upon an offer acceptance, or notifying hiring managers when a candidate updates their resume. Implementing thoughtful automations eliminates human error, ensures timely follow-ups, and frees up valuable HR resources.

Lead Score

While typically associated with sales, Lead Score in Keap is a numerical value assigned to contacts based on their engagement and behavior, indicating their potential “fit” or “readiness.” In an HR context, this concept can be adapted to create a “Candidate Score.” Factors like engagement with job descriptions, completion of pre-screening questions, or interactions with career site content could increase a candidate’s score. This allows recruiters to prioritize candidates who are most engaged or best fit the initial criteria, helping to efficiently identify top talent from a large applicant pool. Automated scoring helps to objectively qualify candidates, ensuring high-potential individuals receive prompt attention.

Opportunity

An Opportunity in Keap represents a potential sales deal or project that moves through distinct stages. In the HR/recruiting world, this concept translates perfectly to a “Candidate Opportunity” or “Hiring Opportunity.” Each open role can be an opportunity, and individual candidates can be tracked through stages like “Application Received,” “First Interview,” “Assessment,” “Offer Extended,” and “Hired.” This provides a clear, visual pipeline for managing all active recruiting efforts, allowing HR professionals to see exactly where each candidate stands in the hiring process, forecast hiring timelines, and identify bottlenecks. Automations can advance opportunities through stages based on triggers like interview completion or tag application.

Email Broadcast

An Email Broadcast in Keap is a one-time email sent to a specific segment of your contact list. Unlike emails within a campaign, broadcasts are not part of an automated sequence but are used for immediate, mass communication. For HR and recruiting, broadcast emails are useful for announcing new job openings to a talent pool, sending general updates to past applicants, distributing company newsletters to employees, or inviting groups of candidates to recruitment events. They are an efficient way to disseminate information broadly and quickly to relevant segments, ensuring your communications are timely and targeted without requiring individual outreach.

Landing Page

A Landing Page in Keap is a standalone web page designed with a specific goal, such as capturing contact information through a form, promoting a job opening, or providing information about a company’s culture. These pages are typically free from navigation menus to minimize distractions and focus the visitor on a single call to action. In recruiting, landing pages are excellent for job postings that require specific application processes, sign-ups for talent network newsletters, or event registrations for virtual career fairs. Integrating these pages directly with Keap allows for automatic contact creation, tag application, and campaign initiation upon form submission, creating a seamless candidate capture and nurturing process.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields allow users to extend Keap’s standard contact record with unique data points relevant to their specific business needs. This means you can store information beyond basic name and email. For HR and recruiting, custom fields are indispensable for tracking specialized candidate data such as preferred start date, salary expectations, specific certifications, pre-employment assessment scores, or internal interviewer notes. Properly configured custom fields ensure that all pertinent information is centralized and easily accessible, supporting informed hiring decisions and compliance requirements. They are crucial for maintaining a comprehensive and effective talent database.

Merge Fields

Merge Fields (also known as personalization fields) are placeholders within Keap emails, landing pages, or templates that automatically pull specific data from a contact’s record and insert it into the content. This allows for highly personalized communication at scale. For HR, merge fields are vital for creating personalized messages in onboarding documents, offer letters, interview confirmations, or rejection notices. Instead of manually typing a candidate’s name, the specific job title, or interview date into each communication, merge fields like `~Contact.FirstName~` or `~Contact.CustomField~` ensure accuracy and a professional, individualized experience for every candidate, saving significant time.

Task

A Task in Keap is an action item assigned to a user or team member, often with a due date, that needs to be completed. Tasks are critical for managing the operational aspects of HR and recruiting. Examples include “Review Candidate Resume,” “Schedule Interview with Hiring Manager,” “Send Offer Letter,” or “Complete Background Check.” Tasks can be manually created or automatically generated by campaigns, ensuring that critical steps in the hiring process are not missed. This feature provides accountability, helps teams stay organized, and streamlines the collaborative efforts required to move candidates efficiently through the recruitment pipeline.

Appointment

An Appointment in Keap is a scheduled meeting or interaction associated with a contact, typically with a date, time, and assigned user. For HR and recruiting, appointments are fundamental for managing interview schedules, candidate meetings, onboarding sessions, or performance reviews. Keap allows for the creation, tracking, and even automation of appointments, often integrating with external calendaring tools. Automating appointment scheduling (e.g., through a booking link on a landing page that directly updates Keap) and sending automated reminders significantly reduces administrative overhead and minimizes no-shows, ensuring a smoother and more efficient scheduling process for both candidates and recruiters.

Follow-up Sequence

A Follow-up Sequence, a core component of Keap’s Campaign Builder, is a series of automated communications and actions designed to nurture a relationship or guide a contact through a process over time. In HR, this can be an incredibly powerful tool for candidate engagement. Examples include a sequence to keep a warm talent pool engaged with company updates, a drip campaign for candidates who didn’t get a specific role but might be a fit for future openings, or a multi-step onboarding sequence for new hires. These sequences ensure consistent, timely communication without constant manual intervention, improving candidate experience and reducing the workload on recruiters.

Web Form

A Web Form in Keap is a customizable online form that collects information from visitors and directly creates or updates contact records within your CRM. These forms are essential for capturing leads, applications, or inquiries. For HR and recruiting, web forms are foundational for job applications, talent network sign-ups, event registrations, and internal employee surveys. When a form is submitted, Keap can automatically trigger a campaign, apply tags, or assign tasks, initiating a seamless workflow. This ensures that every interaction from a potential candidate or employee is immediately captured and processed according to your defined automation strategies.

API Integration

API Integration refers to the process of connecting Keap with other software applications or databases using its Application Programming Interface (API). This allows different systems to “talk” to each other, exchanging data and triggering actions across platforms. For HR and recruiting, API integrations are crucial for creating a unified tech stack. Imagine integrating Keap with your applicant tracking system (ATS), HRIS, payroll software, or a background check service. This eliminates manual data transfer between systems, reduces errors, and creates end-to-end automated workflows from initial application to hire and beyond, significantly enhancing operational efficiency and data integrity.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Keap CRM Data Protection: The HR & Recruiting Implementation Checklist

By Jack DeePublished On: January 9, 2026