A Glossary of Key Terms in Keap Data Management & Export for HR & Recruiting Professionals
For HR leaders, recruiting directors, and operations executives, efficient data management within your CRM is not just about organization—it’s about empowering strategic decisions, streamlining candidate pipelines, and ensuring compliance. This glossary unpacks essential terminology related to Keap data management and export, offering clarity and practical insights for optimizing your recruiting and HR operations. Understanding these terms is crucial for leveraging Keap to its fullest potential, enabling smarter automation, and protecting your most valuable asset: your data.
Keap CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
Keap CRM is a robust platform designed to help small and growing businesses manage customer relationships, sales processes, and marketing automations. For HR and recruiting professionals, Keap serves as a powerful talent relationship management (TRM) system. It enables the centralization of candidate information, tracking of application statuses, management of communication histories, and automation of key recruiting workflows from initial outreach to onboarding. Effective use of Keap allows recruiting teams to build comprehensive candidate profiles, segment talent pools, and nurture relationships, ensuring a streamlined and personalized experience for both candidates and hiring managers.
Contact Record
A contact record in Keap is the foundational element for storing all information pertaining to an individual—whether a candidate, client, or hiring manager. Each record consolidates personal details, communication history, linked tasks, notes, custom field data, and engagement activities (like email opens or website visits). For recruiters, a well-maintained contact record provides a 360-degree view of a candidate’s journey, making it easy to track qualifications, interview stages, and feedback. Accurate and comprehensive contact records are vital for personalized communication, compliance, and effective data analysis in the recruitment process.
Custom Fields
Custom fields in Keap allow users to extend the default data architecture to capture specific information relevant to their unique business processes. For HR and recruiting, these are invaluable for storing specialized candidate data that isn’t covered by standard fields, such as “Desired Salary Range,” “Notice Period,” “Visa Status,” “Key Skills (e.g., Python, SQL),” or “Assessment Scores.” Properly configured custom fields enable precise segmentation of candidates, powerful search capabilities, and the automation of workflows based on specific criteria, ensuring that recruiters have all necessary details at their fingertips to make informed hiring decisions.
Data Export
Data export is the process of extracting information from Keap into a format that can be used outside the platform, typically a CSV or Excel file. For HR and recruiting, exporting data is essential for various purposes: creating custom reports not available natively, migrating data to other systems, performing offline analysis, auditing compliance, or preparing data for external stakeholders. Regularly exporting key data sets—like candidate lists, application statuses, or interview schedules—ensures data portability and provides a critical mechanism for data backup and integrity checks. It’s a fundamental capability for data governance and business continuity.
Data Import
Data import is the process of bringing external data into Keap, often from spreadsheets, other CRMs, or applicant tracking systems (ATS). This is a critical function for onboarding new clients, migrating historical candidate data, or updating existing records in bulk. For recruiting teams, efficient data import allows for the rapid assimilation of new talent pools, event attendee lists, or purchased candidate databases. Proper preparation and mapping of data during the import process are crucial to avoid duplication, maintain data integrity, and ensure that all information aligns correctly with Keap’s fields, including any custom fields.
Tagging (in Keap)
Tagging in Keap is a highly flexible and powerful method for categorizing and segmenting contacts based on shared attributes, behaviors, or interests, without creating custom fields for every single detail. For HR and recruiting, tags are indispensable for organizing candidates by “Skill Set: Java,” “Location: Remote,” “Status: Interviewed,” “Source: LinkedIn,” or “Pipeline: Sales Role.” Tags drive automation, allowing campaigns to trigger when a specific tag is applied, and facilitate targeted communication and reporting. Strategic use of tagging transforms Keap into a dynamic talent segmentation tool.
Campaigns (in Keap)
Keap Campaigns are automated sequences of actions designed to nurture leads, engage clients, or manage specific processes over time. For HR and recruiting, campaigns are instrumental in automating candidate outreach, follow-ups, interview scheduling, and onboarding tasks. Examples include a “New Applicant Nurture” campaign that sends follow-up emails, a “Rejection Notification” campaign, or an “Onboarding Checklist” campaign for new hires. Campaigns ensure consistent communication, reduce manual workload, and provide a scalable framework for managing high volumes of candidates with personalized touchpoints.
Automation Builder (Keap)
The Automation Builder is Keap’s visual interface for creating and managing automated campaigns and workflows. It allows users to drag-and-drop elements to define triggers, sequences, and actions based on contact behavior or data changes. For recruiting professionals, this tool is invaluable for designing intricate hiring funnels: automating tasks like sending assessment links after an application, updating candidate statuses based on email replies, or notifying hiring managers when a candidate reaches a specific stage. The Automation Builder empowers teams to create sophisticated, “set-it-and-forget-it” processes that save significant time and ensure no candidate falls through the cracks.
API Integration (Application Programming Interface)
An API provides a standardized way for different software applications to communicate and exchange data. For Keap users, API integration allows Keap to connect with external systems like applicant tracking systems (ATS), HRIS platforms, background check services, or calendaring tools. This creates a seamless flow of data, eliminating manual data entry and reducing errors. For example, an API integration could automatically push new candidate data from your website’s application form directly into Keap, or sync interview schedules between Keap and Outlook. This capability is foundational for building an interconnected HR tech stack and driving true operational efficiency.
Webhooks
Webhooks are automated messages sent from an application when a specific event occurs, essentially real-time notifications. In the context of Keap and recruiting, a webhook could be triggered when a new contact is added, a tag is applied, or a specific action within a campaign is completed. These webhooks can then “trigger” actions in other integrated systems via platforms like Make.com, such as adding the candidate to a spreadsheet, sending an SMS notification to a recruiter, or initiating a background check process. Webhooks are crucial for building advanced, multi-system automations that respond dynamically to events within Keap.
Data Migration
Data migration is the comprehensive process of transferring data from one system or format to another. For HR and recruiting, this often involves moving large volumes of candidate records, historical hiring data, or client information from a legacy CRM, ATS, or spreadsheet into Keap. This process requires careful planning, data cleaning, mapping, and validation to ensure accuracy and completeness in the new system. Successful data migration is essential for consolidating information, improving data accessibility, and allowing teams to leverage Keap’s automation capabilities with a full historical context.
Data Hygiene
Data hygiene refers to the ongoing practice of cleaning and maintaining accurate, complete, and consistent data within your Keap CRM. For HR and recruiting, this means regularly identifying and removing duplicate candidate records, updating outdated contact information, standardizing data entries (e.g., consistent job titles, location formats), and purging irrelevant or non-compliant data. Poor data hygiene leads to inefficiencies, inaccurate reporting, wasted marketing efforts, and potential compliance issues. Implementing automated tools and regular manual audits for data hygiene is critical for maintaining a reliable and effective talent database.
Data Backup
Data backup is the process of creating copies of your Keap data to ensure it can be recovered in the event of data loss, corruption, or accidental deletion. While Keap has internal redundancy, having an independent, external backup strategy is critical for business continuity, especially for sensitive HR and candidate data. This often involves scheduled data exports or using third-party backup solutions that can create granular, restorable copies of your CRM data. For recruiting, ensuring candidate applications, communication logs, and offer details are securely backed up protects against operational disruptions and potential legal liabilities.
Lead Scoring (in Keap)
Lead scoring in Keap is a method of assigning a numerical value to contacts based on their engagement level, demographic information, and fit against predefined criteria. While traditionally used for sales leads, HR and recruiting teams can adapt lead scoring to “candidate scoring.” Points can be assigned for specific skills, experience levels, interactions with career content, or responses to pre-screening questions. A higher score indicates a more qualified or engaged candidate, allowing recruiters to prioritize their efforts on the most promising talent, streamlining the shortlisting process, and improving hiring efficiency.
Reporting & Analytics (in Keap)
Keap offers built-in reporting and analytics tools to track various metrics related to campaigns, sales, and contact engagement. For HR and recruiting, these features are essential for gaining insights into the effectiveness of recruitment strategies. Teams can monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the number of new applicants, conversion rates at different hiring stages, campaign open rates, and candidate source effectiveness. Leveraging Keap’s reporting capabilities helps HR leaders identify bottlenecks, optimize recruitment funnels, justify resource allocation, and make data-driven decisions to improve overall hiring outcomes and talent acquisition strategies.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: The Definitive Guide to Automated Keap CRM Data Protection & Instant Recovery
