A Glossary of Marketing Automation Terminology in Keap for HR & Recruiting Professionals

In today’s competitive talent landscape, leveraging technology to streamline processes is no longer optional—it’s essential. For HR and recruiting professionals, understanding the core concepts of marketing automation, particularly within a powerful platform like Keap, can revolutionize how you attract, engage, and onboard top talent. This glossary defines key terms, explaining their relevance and practical application in optimizing your recruiting workflows and enhancing candidate experiences. Equip yourself with this knowledge to transform your HR operations from reactive to strategically automated.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation refers to software platforms designed to automate repetitive marketing tasks. In the HR and recruiting context, this means automating candidate communication, follow-ups, interview scheduling reminders, and onboarding sequences. For professionals using Keap, it involves setting up a series of automated actions—like sending personalized emails, updating candidate records, or assigning tasks to recruiters—based on predefined triggers. This frees up significant time for your team to focus on high-value interactions, candidate relationship building, and strategic talent initiatives, rather than getting bogged down in manual administrative duties. By automating the candidate journey, you ensure consistent communication and a professional experience from initial interest to successful hire.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

A CRM system, like Keap, is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. For HR and recruiting, this translates to Candidate Relationship Management, where the “customer” is a job seeker or an employee. Keap acts as a centralized database to store candidate information, track interactions, manage pipelines (e.g., application status, interview stages), and segment your talent pool. It allows HR professionals to maintain a comprehensive history of every touchpoint, ensuring a personalized and consistent experience for candidates, which is crucial for building a strong employer brand and converting promising leads into valuable hires.

Campaign (in Keap)

In Keap, a Campaign is a series of automated actions and communications designed to achieve a specific goal. For HR and recruiting, a campaign might be an onboarding process, a candidate nurturing sequence, or an evergreen communication flow for passive talent. It starts with a specific trigger (e.g., a candidate applying for a job, attending a recruitment event, or being marked as “hired”) and then executes a predefined set of steps. These steps can include sending emails, texts, creating tasks for recruiters, applying tags, or updating candidate records. Keap Campaigns allow HR teams to design sophisticated, multi-stage journeys that guide candidates or new hires through critical processes efficiently and consistently, removing manual effort from repetitive actions.

Sequence (in Keap)

Within a Keap campaign, a Sequence is a fundamental building block that dictates a series of automated actions over time. It’s essentially a timed series of steps, like sending an email on day 1, another reminder on day 3, and a task assignment on day 7. In HR automation, sequences are invaluable for structured follow-ups, drip campaigns for talent pools, or new hire onboarding. For instance, an onboarding sequence might automatically send a welcome email, followed by a link to HR documents, then a survey request, and finally a task to their manager. Sequences ensure that no important step is missed and that communication is timely and consistent, providing a professional and organized experience for candidates and new hires.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a methodology used to rank prospects based on their perceived value or likelihood to convert. In recruiting, this translates to Candidate Scoring, where you assign numerical values to actions, qualifications, or characteristics that indicate a strong fit for a role or high potential. For example, a candidate might receive points for having specific certifications, prior industry experience, or engaging with recruitment emails. Keap can track these interactions and assign scores, allowing HR teams to quickly identify and prioritize the most promising candidates from a large applicant pool. This helps recruiters focus their time and resources on candidates who are most likely to succeed, significantly improving hiring efficiency and quality.

Webhooks

A webhook is an automated message sent from an app when a specific event occurs, essentially an HTTP callback or “reverse API.” For HR and recruiting professionals using Keap, webhooks are critical for integrating Keap with other essential HR tech tools that may not have native integrations. For instance, when a candidate reaches a specific stage in a Keap campaign (e.g., “offer accepted”), a webhook can automatically trigger an action in an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), an HRIS, or even a custom database. This enables real-time data synchronization and triggers workflows across disparate systems, eliminating manual data entry and ensuring all platforms have the most up-to-date candidate information.

Automated Follow-up

Automated follow-up refers to the process of sending pre-scheduled, personalized communications to candidates or new hires without manual intervention. Within Keap, this is typically managed through campaigns and sequences. For recruiters, this means setting up a series of emails or texts that are automatically sent after an initial application, an interview, or even if a candidate goes “cold.” This ensures consistent engagement, keeps candidates warm, and maintains interest without requiring a recruiter to manually track and send each message. Automated follow-ups improve the candidate experience, reduce recruiter workload, and can significantly decrease time-to-hire by keeping the communication lines open and timely.

Segmentation

Segmentation is the practice of dividing a broad pool of candidates or employees into smaller, distinct groups based on shared characteristics. In Keap, this is commonly achieved through tags, custom fields, and saved searches. For HR and recruiting, effective segmentation allows for highly targeted communication and personalized experiences. For example, you might segment your talent pool by “Software Engineers,” “Sales Leadership,” “Entry-Level,” or “Previous Applicants.” This enables you to send relevant job alerts only to qualified candidates, tailor onboarding materials for specific departments, or deliver targeted surveys. Segmentation ensures that your messages resonate deeply with each group, improving engagement rates and the overall effectiveness of your HR initiatives.

Triggers

In marketing automation, a trigger is an event or action that initiates a specific automation sequence or campaign. In Keap, triggers are the starting points for all your automated HR workflows. Common triggers for recruiting might include: a candidate submitting a web form (e.g., job application), a tag being applied to a candidate record (e.g., “Interview Stage 1”), a candidate clicking a link in an email, or a recruiter manually starting a campaign for a new hire. Defining clear triggers is crucial for designing efficient and responsive automation that reacts to candidate behavior or changes in their status, ensuring that your HR processes are dynamic and always moving forward without constant manual oversight.

Landing Page

A landing page is a standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign, designed to capture visitor information through a form. In the HR context, landing pages are invaluable for recruitment efforts. Recruiters can use Keap to build dedicated landing pages for specific job openings, talent network sign-ups, or event registrations (e.g., virtual career fairs). These pages focus on a single call to action, providing details about the role or opportunity and encouraging candidates to submit their information. By linking these pages directly to Keap campaigns, submitted forms can automatically trigger follow-up emails, apply relevant tags, and initiate the candidate’s journey, streamlining the intake and nurturing process.

Email Marketing

Email marketing involves sending commercial messages, typically to a group of people, using email. In HR and recruiting, it’s a foundational communication tool for nurturing candidates, sending job alerts, providing interview confirmations, delivering onboarding materials, and keeping employees informed. Keap provides robust email marketing capabilities, allowing recruiters to design professional, branded emails, segment their candidate lists for targeted outreach, and track open rates and clicks. By automating email sequences within Keap, HR teams can maintain consistent, personalized communication with large talent pools, ensuring candidates feel valued and informed throughout their journey, ultimately enhancing the employer brand and recruiting efficiency.

Workflows

Workflows refer to a series of tasks or processes that are executed in a specific order to achieve a particular outcome. In the context of HR and recruiting automation with Keap, workflows are the structured sequences of actions that guide candidates through various stages, from initial application to onboarding. This might involve an “Applicant Screening Workflow” that moves a candidate from applied to reviewed, or an “Onboarding Workflow” that ensures all new hire paperwork and welcome communications are sent. While “campaigns” and “sequences” are Keap-specific terms for building these, the overarching concept of “workflows” helps HR professionals map out their manual processes and then translate them into automated steps within the Keap platform.

Integration

Integration refers to the process of connecting two or more software applications or systems to allow them to exchange data and functions. For HR and recruiting, integrating Keap with other essential tools like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), HR Information Systems (HRIS), scheduling tools, or background check platforms is critical for creating a unified and efficient ecosystem. Keap’s robust API and third-party integration capabilities (often via tools like Make.com) allow for seamless data flow, eliminating manual data entry, reducing errors, and ensuring that candidate information is consistent across all platforms. This creates a “single source of truth” for candidate data, empowering HR teams with accurate information and streamlined operations.

Conditional Logic

Conditional logic in marketing automation refers to the ability for an automation path to change based on specific conditions or candidate behaviors. In Keap, this means designing campaigns where different actions are taken depending on how a candidate interacts with your communications or based on data in their record. For example, if a candidate clicks a link about “benefits,” they might receive additional information on benefits; if they don’t open an email, a different follow-up might be sent. For HR, this allows for highly personalized and responsive recruiting workflows. It ensures that candidates receive relevant information at the right time, adapting the candidate journey dynamically to their unique interests and engagement levels.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Keap CRM Data Protection: Essential Backup and Recovery for Business Continuity

By Jack DeePublished On: January 9, 2026