Today has been an interesting day. Some of you may remember a story we ran a few weeks ago about Walmart going paperless. In a nutshell, soon you will be able to connect your phone number to your Walmart.com account and type your phone number in at the cash register when you check out. This will automatically send you a digital copy of your receipt so you will always have a copy in case you need it for returns or anything else. At the time I said I was excited to see what changes would happen as a result of this new program and I thought that yesterday we were seeing the first change.
Yesterday, SavingStar announced that their program would soon be able to be used at Walmart. If you are unfamiliar with SavingStar, you connect your loyalty cards to the program and get discounts on different products. Well when I saw this I just assumed that they were going to use the new phone number feature to link up SavingStar to your Walmart receipts. Turns out I was wrong about that, Walmart isn’t associated with SavingStar in any way so it might become another “Receipt Upload” app like Ibotta, Checkout 51, or Shopmium.
But here’s the interesting part of the story, in the course of tracking down all the info for this article I managed to get in contact with the Walmart PR team who walked me through some of the changes that ARE coming soon. Essentially, as soon as the ability to type our phone numbers in at the register gets rolled out it opens up a bunch of awesome savings opportunities for all of us.
Automatic Savings Catcher enrollment
I am in one of the 6 beta testing areas for Walmart Savings Catcher and let me tell you, it’s AWESOME. I can’t even tell you how many times Walmart has found a better deal on something for me and added money into my Savings Catcher account (If you are not sure what Savings Catcher is, here’s the last thing I wrote about it. It will change how you shop) But the one thing that is a bit of a hassle is typing in that long receipt number every time I shop. Once this new receipt program goes live and Savings Catcher rolls out nationwide, it will be a fully automatic process. Every thing you buy will be checked against your local ads and the difference will be credited into your account where you can add it to a Walmart eGift Card. Amazing!
Predictive Shopping Lists
How many times have you gotten home after a shopping trip only to discover you forgot that one thing you really need? What if your phone reminded you to pick it up while you were in the store? That’s what’s in store for us soon. As you begin to let Walmart track your buying habits through the phone number program, Walmart will learn how often you like to buy certain products. For instance, if you like to buy dish detergent every 7 weeks and you are at the store on your 7th week, it could trigger a text to remind you to pick up detergent. The best shopping list is the one we never have to write down and we may get there soon!
Possible Digital Coupons
What else is in store for us? I know other stores use their loyalty program to trigger eCoupons for certain products we might be interested in so it wouldn’t shock me to see that happen. Basically anything that Walmart can do to help us save money and make our shopping experiences smoother will be considered and implemented. Let’s face facts, anything they can do to take our ability to save money out of the hands of the cashiers who can’t seem to master those complicated coupon and ad match policies (that’s sarcasm) and automate it will be a huge plus for us all.
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