A Glossary of Key Terms in Keap Data Management Terminology

For HR and recruiting professionals, mastering data management within your CRM is not just about organization; it’s about unlocking efficiency, ensuring compliance, and empowering strategic decisions. In a world where data drives talent acquisition and employee management, understanding the core terminology of platforms like Keap is paramount. This glossary provides clear, authoritative definitions for key Keap data management terms, specifically tailored to help HR and recruiting leaders leverage their systems for maximum impact and a competitive edge.

Keap CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Keap CRM is a comprehensive platform designed to manage and automate interactions with customers, clients, and in the context of HR and recruiting, candidates and employees. Beyond traditional sales and marketing, Keap serves as a central hub for all contact data, communication history, and automated workflows. For HR and recruiting professionals, Keap streamlines candidate pipelines, onboarding processes, and employee engagement, allowing for personalized communication and efficient tracking of every interaction. It enables teams to move beyond manual spreadsheets, ensuring that no candidate falls through the cracks and every employee touchpoint is managed strategically, ultimately saving valuable time and reducing human error.

Contact Record

A Contact Record in Keap is the fundamental unit of information for an individual within the system. It encompasses all data points associated with a person, including their name, contact details (email, phone), company affiliation, job title, communication history, notes, and custom field data. For HR and recruiting, a robust contact record is vital for building a comprehensive candidate profile, tracking application stages, interview feedback, and even post-hire performance. Maintaining accurate and detailed contact records ensures that recruiters have a 360-degree view of each candidate, enabling more informed decision-making and personalized engagement throughout the talent lifecycle.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields are user-defined data fields that extend the standard information captured in a Keap Contact Record. They allow organizations to store specific, unique data relevant to their operations that isn’t covered by Keap’s default fields. In HR and recruiting, custom fields are invaluable for capturing details like specific skill sets, certifications, preferred work location, salary expectations, interview availability, or even onboarding status. Implementing well-designed custom fields ensures that all critical candidate and employee data is systematically recorded and easily searchable, facilitating granular segmentation, targeted communication, and comprehensive reporting tailored to the unique needs of the talent acquisition process.

Tags

Tags are labels applied to Contact Records in Keap, serving as a flexible and powerful mechanism for categorization, segmentation, and triggering automation. Unlike custom fields which store specific data, tags act as markers that indicate a contact’s status, interest, or characteristic. For HR and recruiting, tags are essential for segmenting candidates by pipeline stage (e.g., “Applicant – Interviewed,” “Onboarding – Complete”), skill categories (“Java Developer,” “Sales Leader”), or source (“LinkedIn,” “Referral”). Tags are frequently used as triggers for Keap automations, allowing for dynamic and intelligent workflows, such as sending automated follow-ups to candidates post-interview or initiating onboarding tasks when an “Offer Accepted” tag is applied.

Campaigns (in Keap)

Keap Campaigns are pre-designed, automated sequences of marketing and communication activities executed over time based on specific triggers and conditions. While often associated with sales and marketing, campaigns are incredibly powerful for HR and recruiting. They can automate the entire candidate journey from initial application acknowledgment to interview scheduling reminders, post-interview follow-ups, and even nurturing passive candidates. For new hires, campaigns can manage onboarding communications, drip-feeding essential information, welcome messages, and task reminders. By automating these touchpoints, HR teams ensure consistency, reduce manual effort, and enhance the candidate and employee experience, freeing up valuable time for strategic, human-centric interactions.

Automation (Keap/Make.com)

In the context of Keap, automation refers to the system’s ability to automatically perform tasks or trigger actions based on predefined rules or contact behavior. This goes beyond simple email sequences, encompassing complex workflows that can update contact records, apply tags, send internal notifications, or even integrate with external systems via tools like Make.com. For HR and recruiting, automation is a game-changer: think automated resume parsing, interview scheduling, background check initiation, or candidate rejection emails triggered by a pipeline stage change. Integrating Keap with Make.com further extends this power, allowing for seamless data flow between Keap and dozens of other HR tech tools, dramatically reducing manual intervention and increasing process speed and accuracy across the entire talent lifecycle.

Lead Score

Lead Scoring in Keap is a system that assigns numerical values to contacts based on their engagement, demographics, and behavior, indicating their potential “readiness” or “fit.” While traditionally used for sales leads, HR and recruiting can adapt lead scoring to prioritize candidates. For instance, a candidate might gain points for specific skills mentioned in their resume (via custom fields), for engaging with recruiting content (opening emails, visiting career pages), or for completing assessment tasks. A higher lead score could signify a stronger candidate fit or higher engagement, prompting recruiters to prioritize outreach or accelerate them through the hiring pipeline. This data-driven approach ensures that recruiters focus their valuable time on the most promising talent, improving efficiency and reducing time-to-hire.

Data Backup

Data Backup is the process of creating copies of data from your Keap CRM and storing them in a separate, secure location. This crucial practice ensures business continuity and protects against data loss due to accidental deletion, system errors, malicious attacks, or unforeseen technical failures. For HR and recruiting, losing Keap data could mean losing critical candidate applications, interview notes, employee records, or compliance-related information, leading to significant operational disruption and legal risks. Regular, automated data backups, ideally performed off-platform, provide an essential safety net, allowing for the restoration of information and minimizing downtime. This proactive measure is fundamental to maintaining data integrity and peace of mind.

Data Restore

Data Restore is the process of retrieving backed-up Keap data and returning it to an operational state within the CRM, replacing lost or corrupted information. It’s the critical counterpart to data backup, allowing organizations to recover from data loss incidents swiftly and effectively. For HR and recruiting teams, the ability to perform a precise data restore means that a mistakenly deleted candidate pipeline, an overwritten employee record, or a corrupted automation sequence can be reinstated with minimal disruption. A reliable data restore capability, especially one that allows for previewing changes before commit, ensures that business-critical operations can resume quickly, safeguarding the integrity of talent data and the continuity of HR processes. This minimizes impact on hiring velocity and employee management.

API Integration (Application Programming Interface)

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of rules and protocols that allows different software applications to communicate and exchange data with each other. In the context of Keap, API integration enables seamless data flow between Keap and other critical HR and recruiting systems, such as applicant tracking systems (ATS), HRIS platforms, background check providers, or specialized assessment tools. For example, a new candidate entered into an ATS could automatically create a contact record in Keap, or a completed onboarding form in Keap could update an employee’s profile in the HRIS. API integrations eliminate manual data entry, reduce errors, and create a truly connected ecosystem, saving HR teams hundreds of hours and ensuring data consistency across all platforms.

Webhook

A Webhook is an automated message sent from an application when a specific event occurs, acting as a real-time notification mechanism between systems. Essentially, it’s a “user-defined HTTP callback.” In Keap, a webhook can be triggered when a contact fills out a form, reaches a certain stage in a campaign, or has a specific tag applied. For HR and recruiting, webhooks are incredibly powerful for initiating immediate actions in other systems. For example, when a candidate moves to “Interview Scheduled” in Keap, a webhook could instantly trigger a calendar invite in Google Calendar, create a task in a project management tool, or update a record in an external HRIS. This real-time communication ensures workflows are responsive and eliminates delays, especially when orchestrating complex processes across multiple platforms.

Data Segmentation

Data Segmentation is the process of dividing your Keap Contact Records into smaller, distinct groups based on shared characteristics, behaviors, or criteria. This strategic approach allows HR and recruiting professionals to tailor their communication, automations, and outreach efforts to specific audiences. For example, you might segment candidates by skill set, location, experience level, or application status. For existing employees, segmentation could be based on department, tenure, or training needs. Effective data segmentation ensures that messages are relevant and impactful, improving engagement rates and preventing generic communications. It’s crucial for running targeted recruiting campaigns, personalized onboarding experiences, and managing specific employee populations with precision, leading to better outcomes and more efficient use of resources.

Data Hygiene

Data Hygiene refers to the ongoing process of ensuring the accuracy, completeness, consistency, and relevance of the data within your Keap CRM. This involves identifying and correcting errors, removing duplicate records, updating outdated information, and standardizing data formats. For HR and recruiting, poor data hygiene can lead to significant problems: sending emails to incorrect addresses, communicating with the wrong candidate, generating inaccurate reports, or violating data privacy regulations. Proactive data hygiene practices, such as regularly de-duping records, archiving old candidates, and validating contact details, ensure that your Keap database remains a reliable and efficient resource, preventing wasted time, miscommunications, and flawed strategic decisions based on unreliable information.

Single Source of Truth (SSOT)

A Single Source of Truth (SSOT) refers to the practice of aggregating all critical data from various systems into one master location, ensuring that everyone in an organization accesses and relies on the same, consistent set of information. In the context of Keap for HR and recruiting, establishing Keap as an SSOT means it’s the definitive repository for candidate profiles, application statuses, interview notes, and even initial employee data before it moves to an HRIS. This prevents data silos, discrepancies between systems, and conflicting information, which often plague recruiting pipelines. By centralizing data in Keap and integrating it intelligently with other tools, HR teams gain a holistic, accurate view of talent, enabling more effective collaboration, streamlined processes, and confident, data-driven decision-making.

Data Governance

Data Governance refers to the overall management of data availability, usability, integrity, and security within an organization, particularly as it pertains to establishing clear policies and procedures. In the context of Keap and HR/recruiting, data governance dictates who can access what information, how data is entered and maintained, and how it complies with regulations like GDPR or CCPA. This includes setting standards for custom fields, tag usage, data retention, and privacy protocols for sensitive candidate and employee information. Robust data governance ensures that Keap data is not only accurate and clean but also secure, compliant, and consistently managed across the HR and recruiting functions, minimizing risks and maximizing the strategic value of your talent data.

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