A Glossary of Key Keap CRM Terms for Recruiters

In the fast-paced world of recruitment, efficiency and precision are paramount. Keap CRM, a powerful sales and marketing automation platform, offers a robust suite of tools that, when understood and leveraged correctly, can transform how HR and recruiting professionals manage candidates, track pipelines, and automate outreach. This glossary provides essential Keap CRM terminology, tailored specifically for recruiters, to help you streamline your hiring processes, enhance candidate experiences, and ensure no top talent slips through the cracks. Understanding these terms is the first step towards automating your recruiting workflow and focusing on what truly matters: connecting with the right people.

Contact Record

At the heart of Keap CRM, a Contact Record is the comprehensive profile for every individual in your database, whether they are a candidate, client, or hiring manager. For recruiters, this record stores all pertinent information about a candidate, including their contact details, resume, interview notes, associated tags, lead score, and interaction history. A well-maintained Contact Record ensures that all team members have immediate access to a candidate’s complete journey, allowing for personalized communication and informed decision-making. Automating updates to these records, such as parsing resume data directly into custom fields, significantly reduces manual data entry and human error, saving valuable time for your recruiting team.

Tag

Tags in Keap CRM are descriptive labels applied to Contact Records, used for segmentation and triggering automations. For recruiters, tags are invaluable for categorizing candidates by skill set, industry experience, geographic location, application status (e.g., “Interviewed – First Round,” “Qualified Lead”), or even preferred communication methods. Instead of manually sifting through spreadsheets, tags allow you to instantly segment your database to identify specific candidate pools for new openings or targeted outreach. For example, a “Java Developer” tag can trigger a sequence of emails about relevant job opportunities, while an “Onboarding Complete” tag can initiate new hire follow-up automations.

Campaign

A Keap Campaign is a strategic, multi-step automation designed to guide contacts through a predefined journey. In a recruiting context, campaigns are powerful tools for managing the entire candidate lifecycle, from initial interest to onboarding. This could involve an “Applicant Nurture Campaign” that sends automated thank-you emails, skill assessment requests, or interview confirmations. A “Passive Candidate Outreach Campaign” might deliver valuable content to prospects over time, nurturing relationships until the right opportunity arises. Campaigns can branch based on candidate actions (e.g., opening an email, submitting a form), allowing for dynamic and personalized candidate experiences that would be impossible to manage manually.

Sequence

A Sequence is a linear series of automated communications or actions within a Keap Campaign, typically initiated by a specific trigger. Think of it as a sub-process within your larger campaign. For recruiters, a sequence might be an “Interview Follow-up Sequence” that sends a thank you email immediately after an interview, followed by an expectation-setting email two days later. Another common sequence is an “Onboarding Checklist Sequence” delivering critical documents and information to new hires over their first week. Sequences ensure consistent, timely communication without manual intervention, freeing recruiters to focus on high-value tasks like candidate engagement and negotiation.

Pipeline

Keap CRM’s Pipeline feature provides a visual representation of your candidate or client journey, broken down into distinct stages. For recruiting, this translates into a highly effective way to track candidates through your hiring process, from “Application Received” to “Offer Extended” and “Hired.” Each stage within the pipeline can have associated automations, ensuring no candidate is forgotten and every touchpoint is managed efficiently. Recruiters can quickly see where each candidate stands, identify bottlenecks, and prioritize actions, making the entire recruitment process more transparent and manageable. This visual clarity is crucial for team collaboration and forecasting hiring needs.

Opportunity

Within a Keap Pipeline, an Opportunity represents a specific instance of a potential candidate moving through a hiring process or a potential client engagement. For recruiters, an Opportunity could be “Candidate John Doe for Senior Developer Role.” It carries specific details like the candidate’s name, the job they applied for, the potential salary, and the current stage in the hiring pipeline. Opportunities allow for detailed tracking and reporting on individual candidates, linking all interactions, notes, and task progress to that specific potential hire. This granularity is essential for accurately forecasting hiring timelines and analyzing conversion rates at each stage of the recruitment funnel.

Lead Score

Lead Scoring in Keap CRM assigns a numeric value to a contact based on their engagement and demographic information, indicating their level of interest or qualification. For recruiters, this is a powerful tool for identifying top talent more efficiently. Points can be assigned for actions like viewing job postings, downloading career guides, or having specific skills listed on a parsed resume. Conversely, points might be deducted for inactivity. A high lead score could automatically trigger an alert to a recruiter for immediate follow-up or move a candidate into a priority nurture campaign, ensuring that valuable recruiting resources are focused on the most promising prospects.

Webform

A Keap Webform is an online form used to capture information from external sources, typically embedded on your website or used as a standalone landing page. For recruiters, webforms are essential for job applications, resume submissions, candidate interest forms, and event registrations (e.g., career fairs). When a candidate submits a webform, their data automatically populates a new or existing Contact Record in Keap, and can trigger subsequent automations, such as sending a confirmation email, applying relevant tags, or initiating a follow-up campaign. This seamless data capture eliminates manual entry errors and immediately engages potential hires in your recruiting workflow.

Automation

Automation in Keap CRM refers to the process of setting up rules that trigger specific actions based on predefined criteria or events. This is the cornerstone of an efficient recruiting operation. Examples include automatically sending a welcome email when a new resume is submitted, assigning tasks to recruiters when a candidate reaches a new pipeline stage, or moving inactive candidates to a “Re-engagement Campaign.” By automating repetitive tasks, recruiters save countless hours, reduce the chance of human error, and ensure a consistent candidate experience across all touchpoints, allowing them to focus their expertise on high-value interactions and strategic talent acquisition.

Broadcast

A Keap Broadcast is a one-time email or SMS message sent to a specific segment of your contact list. Unlike emails within a campaign or sequence, broadcasts are immediate and not part of an automated series. For recruiters, broadcasts are ideal for urgent communications such as announcing a new job opening, sending a company newsletter to a talent pool, inviting candidates to a last-minute recruitment event, or providing critical updates to existing applicants. They offer flexibility for ad-hoc messaging while still leveraging Keap’s segmentation capabilities to ensure messages reach the most relevant audience without manual list management.

Email Builder

Keap’s Email Builder is a user-friendly interface for designing and creating professional, branded email templates without needing coding knowledge. For recruiters, this means easily crafting engaging job descriptions, interview invitations, onboarding instructions, and follow-up communications that reflect your company’s brand identity. You can drag and drop content blocks, add images, links, and merge fields to personalize each message. Having a library of well-designed email templates in the Email Builder ensures consistency, professionalism, and saves significant time, as recruiters can quickly select and customize messages for various stages of the candidate journey.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields in Keap CRM allow you to extend the standard Contact Record with additional data fields specific to your recruiting needs. Beyond basic contact information, you can create custom fields for details like “Target Salary,” “Years of Experience,” “Portfolio Link,” “Visa Status,” “Preferred Start Date,” or “Recruiter Assigned.” These fields are crucial for capturing granular candidate data that is vital for accurate matching and compliance. Automating the population of custom fields through webforms or integrations ensures that all critical information is organized and accessible, enabling more precise candidate filtering and personalized communication strategies.

Merge Fields

Merge Fields (also known as personalization fields) are placeholders in your Keap emails, templates, or communication that automatically pull specific data from a Contact Record to personalize messages. For recruiters, merge fields are indispensable for creating highly personalized communications at scale. Instead of “Hello Candidate,” you can use `~Contact.FirstName~` to dynamically insert “Hello John.” Other common merge fields might include `~Contact.JobTitle~` or `~Company.Name~`. This personalization significantly improves open rates and engagement, making candidates feel valued and directly addressed, enhancing the overall candidate experience without requiring manual customization for each message.

Internal Forms

Keap Internal Forms are similar to webforms but are designed to be filled out by your internal team members, such as recruiters or hiring managers. They are used to manually add new contacts, update existing contact information, or trigger specific automations from within the Keap application. For a recruiting team, internal forms can be used for logging interview feedback, adding new referrals, updating a candidate’s status after a phone screen, or initiating an offer letter workflow. These forms streamline internal processes, ensure consistent data entry by the team, and can instantly trigger follow-up tasks or move candidates through pipeline stages, keeping everyone aligned.

Integration/API

Integration in Keap CRM refers to connecting Keap with other third-party applications and services, often facilitated by an Application Programming Interface (API). For recruiters, this is critical for building a cohesive tech stack. Integrations allow Keap to share data with HRIS systems, applicant tracking systems (ATS), job boards, resume parsing tools, or communication platforms like SMS gateways. For example, a candidate applying on a job board could automatically create a contact record in Keap, trigger a welcome email, and add them to a nurture campaign—all via API integration. This eliminates data silos, reduces manual data transfer, and creates a truly automated and efficient recruiting ecosystem.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: The Automated Recruiter’s Keap CRM Implementation Checklist: Powering HR with AI & Automation