A Glossary of Key Keap Automation & Campaign Flow Terms for HR & Recruiting Professionals
In today’s fast-paced HR and recruiting landscape, leveraging automation isn’t just an advantage—it’s a necessity. Keap, a powerful CRM and marketing automation platform, offers robust tools that can transform how talent acquisition and management teams operate. However, navigating its features requires understanding a specific set of terminology. This glossary demystifies 15 essential Keap automation and campaign flow terms, providing clarity and practical context for HR leaders, recruiters, and operations professionals looking to streamline their processes, from candidate sourcing to onboarding and beyond. Equip yourself with this knowledge to build more efficient, error-free, and scalable talent strategies.
Keap Campaign
A Keap Campaign is the overarching framework for automating a series of marketing, sales, or operational tasks designed to achieve a specific business objective. For HR and recruiting, a campaign might orchestrate the entire candidate journey, from initial application to interview scheduling, offer extension, and even new hire onboarding. It acts as a blueprint, connecting various automated steps like email sequences, internal task assignments, and conditional logic. By designing thoughtful Keap Campaigns, HR professionals can ensure consistent communication with candidates, reduce manual administrative burdens, and create a seamless experience that reflects positively on the employer brand, ultimately improving efficiency and reducing time-to-hire.
Sequence
A Sequence is a core component within a Keap Campaign, representing a series of timed or triggered actions executed in a specific order. These actions often include sending emails, text messages, assigning tasks, or applying/removing tags. In an HR context, a sequence could automate a candidate nurturing path: perhaps sending a “thank you for applying” email immediately, followed by a skills assessment link three days later, and then a reminder email if the assessment isn’t completed within a week. Sequences allow for systematic and personalized communication at scale, ensuring no candidate falls through the cracks and that recruiters can focus on high-value interactions rather than repetitive administrative tasks.
Tag
A Tag in Keap is a flexible label used to categorize contacts based on their actions, interests, or attributes. Think of tags as digital sticky notes that provide quick insights into a contact’s profile. For HR and recruiting, tags are invaluable for segmenting candidates: “Applicant – Senior Software Engineer,” “Interviewed – HR Manager,” “Declined Offer,” “Onboarding Complete.” These tags can then trigger specific automation sequences, filter contact lists for targeted communication, or track progress through the recruitment pipeline. Effective tagging ensures that the right message reaches the right candidate at the right time, enhancing personalization and the overall candidate experience while providing clear data for recruiters.
Custom Field
Custom Fields in Keap allow you to store specific, unique data points about your contacts beyond the standard information (like name and email). These fields are critical for capturing information vital to HR and recruiting processes. Examples include “Desired Salary,” “Years of Experience,” “LinkedIn Profile URL,” “Visa Status,” or “Referral Source.” By collecting this detailed data, recruiters can qualify candidates more effectively, personalize communications with relevant information, and use these data points to drive conditional automation within campaigns. Properly configured custom fields are essential for building a robust and informative candidate database, enabling more precise candidate matching and streamlined workflows.
Lead Score (or Contact Score)
Lead Scoring, or more broadly Contact Scoring in Keap, is a numerical value assigned to a contact that indicates their level of engagement and potential fit. Points are added or subtracted based on various interactions, such as opening emails, clicking links, submitting forms, or engaging with specific content. In recruiting, this can be adapted to “Candidate Scoring.” For example, a candidate might gain points for completing a profile, visiting a career page, or responding to an email, and lose points for inactivity. This helps recruiters prioritize and focus their efforts on the most engaged and promising candidates, optimizing their time and improving conversion rates from applicant to hire.
Webform
A Webform in Keap is a customizable online form used to capture information from website visitors, which then automatically creates or updates a contact record in your Keap CRM. For HR and recruiting, webforms are fundamental for various processes: job applications, expressions of interest for future roles, event registrations (like career fairs), or requests for more information about company culture. Submitting a webform can be set as a “Goal” to kick off a specific campaign, such as an “Applicant Tracking Campaign” or a “Candidate Nurturing Sequence.” They streamline data collection, eliminate manual entry, and ensure a consistent intake process for all candidates.
Landing Page
A Landing Page in Keap (or integrated through Keap with other tools) is a standalone web page designed with a single focus: to prompt a visitor to take a specific action, such as filling out a form, downloading a resource, or applying for a job. Unlike a full website, it removes distractions to maximize conversion. In recruiting, landing pages are invaluable for showcasing specific job openings, promoting employer branding videos, offering a “Guide to Working at [Company Name],” or capturing leads for a talent pool. They are powerful tools for targeted recruitment marketing, ensuring that interested candidates have a clear path to engage and that their data is captured efficiently to initiate automated follow-up.
Broadcast
A Broadcast in Keap refers to a one-time, mass communication sent to a specific segment of your contact list, typically an email or SMS message. Unlike a sequence, which is part of an automated workflow, a broadcast is a manual, immediate send. HR and recruiting teams frequently use broadcasts for important announcements, such as new job openings, company news, invitations to a hiring event, or urgent communications to a segment of candidates (e.g., “Interview process update for all candidates for Role X”). Broadcasts are effective for timely communication and reaching a large, targeted audience quickly without the need to set up a full automation campaign.
Decision Diamond
A Decision Diamond is a logic gate within a Keap Sequence or Campaign Flow that allows for conditional branching. It evaluates a contact’s data or actions (e.g., did they click a link, do they have a specific tag, what is their custom field value?) and then directs them down different paths based on the outcome. For HR, a decision diamond could check if a candidate has a “Qualified” tag before sending them an interview invitation, or if their “Years of Experience” custom field meets a minimum requirement. This ensures that candidates receive relevant communications and progress through the appropriate stages of the hiring process, personalizing the journey and making the automation intelligent and adaptive.
Goal
A Goal in Keap is a trigger that initiates or progresses a contact through a campaign or sequence. Goals are the entry and exit points for automation, allowing actions outside of Keap to influence a contact’s journey. Common goals include a contact submitting a webform, clicking a specific link, or being manually tagged. In recruiting, a “Goal” might be “Application Submitted” (triggered by a webform), “Interview Scheduled” (triggered by an automation link click), or “Offer Accepted” (triggered by a tag). Goals make campaigns dynamic, ensuring that candidates move logically through the recruitment pipeline based on their interactions and key milestones, automating next steps seamlessly.
API Integration
API (Application Programming Interface) Integration in Keap refers to the process of connecting Keap with other software applications to enable them to communicate and exchange data. This allows for seamless data flow and extends Keap’s capabilities. For HR and recruiting, API integrations are powerful for connecting Keap with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), HRIS platforms, background check services, video interviewing tools, or scheduling software like Calendly. For instance, an API integration could automatically push candidate data from a job board into Keap, or update a candidate’s status in Keap based on an action in an ATS. This creates a “single source of truth” and eliminates manual data entry, dramatically increasing efficiency.
Webhook
A Webhook is an automated message sent from one application to another when a specific event occurs, essentially providing real-time information and enabling instant communication between systems. In Keap automation, webhooks are crucial for integrating with applications that don’t have direct API connections or for triggering advanced custom workflows via platforms like Make.com. For HR, a webhook could be fired from Keap when a candidate reaches a “Hired” status, sending a notification to an external HRIS to initiate onboarding, or triggering a custom email send through a third-party service. Webhooks are vital for building complex, interconnected automation ecosystems, ensuring timely data synchronization and cross-platform actions.
Automation Link
An Automation Link in Keap is a special type of clickable link within an email or web page that, when clicked, automatically performs a predefined action for the contact. This action could be applying a tag, starting a sequence, ending a sequence, or even triggering a custom HTTP post (webhook). In recruiting, automation links are incredibly versatile. For example, a “Schedule Interview” link could apply an “Interview Requested” tag and start a scheduling sequence, while a “Not Interested” link could apply a “No Longer Interested” tag and remove the candidate from active consideration. These links empower candidates to self-segment and drive their own journey, making processes more interactive and efficient.
Internal Form
An Internal Form in Keap is a specialized type of form designed for use by your internal team members, rather than external contacts. These forms are typically used to manually add new contacts, update existing contact records, or trigger specific automation sequences based on internal actions. For HR and recruiting, internal forms are invaluable for: manually adding referrals to the CRM, updating a candidate’s status after an interview, logging interview notes, or triggering an offer letter generation campaign once a hiring decision is made. They standardize internal data entry processes, ensure data consistency, and enable team members to initiate automated workflows directly from their daily activities.
Task
A Task in Keap is an actionable item assigned to a specific user or team member, typically as part of an automated sequence or manually. Tasks serve as reminders and directives for human intervention within an otherwise automated process. In HR and recruiting, tasks are essential for managing follow-up actions that require personal attention. Examples include: “Call Candidate for Phone Screen,” “Review Resume for Role X,” “Send Offer Letter,” “Conduct Reference Checks,” or “Follow Up with Hiring Manager.” By automating task assignment, Keap ensures that critical human interactions occur at the right time, preventing oversight and keeping the recruitment process moving forward efficiently.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: The Ultimate Guide to Keap CRM Data Protection for HR & Recruiting: Backup, Recovery, and 5 Critical Post-Restore Validation Steps
