Walmart is paying part of your price. Now you can make it pay more.
Flashpricer's new Walmart Funded Savings Optimization add-on finds the highest price Walmart will still fund, keeps your price right under it, and re-checks it every night. Your customer pays the same. You get paid more.
If you sell on Walmart, you've probably seen this: a product shows up on Walmart.com at a lower price than the one you set. Sometimes lower than your minimum.
Most of the time, that's Walmart Funded Savings. Walmart shows the shopper a discounted price and covers the difference itself. You set $18.99, the shopper sees $16.99, and your sale still settles at $18.99.
That part is well known. This next part isn't.
Walmart keeps paying when you raise your price
Walmart doesn't only fund the gap at your current price. Raise your price, and it will often keep showing the shopper the same discounted price and simply pay you a bigger difference.
Take that $18.99 up to $19.89, and the shopper may still see $16.99. Walmart now pays $2.90 instead of $2.00. Your customer pays the same, and you make $0.90 more on the sale.
There's a limit. Walmart only does this up to a point, and it never tells you where that point is. Go past it and the discount disappears: the shopper sees your full price, and conversion drops with it. The limit is different for every product, and Walmart moves it over time.
Finding it by hand means pushing a price, waiting for Walmart to apply it, checking what shoppers see, and pulling back fast when you overshoot. That's tedious for one product. Across a catalog, nobody does it, and the money stays with Walmart.
How the optimizer finds the limit
Walmart Funded Savings Optimization runs that search for you on every product Walmart funds, and keeps running it. Here's one search, using the example above:
Four details make this work:
It waits before counting a yes.
Right after a price change, a funded price and a price Walmart hasn't applied yet look the same on Walmart.com. So a test only counts as funded once Walmart has had time to apply it, up to five minutes.
It reacts to a no right away.
A refused price shows on Walmart within a minute. The optimizer checks every minute and goes straight back to the last funded price.
It gets down to the cent.
It keeps splitting the gap until the highest funded price and the first refused one are a cent apart.
It keeps checking.
Walmart moves its limits, so the optimizer re-checks every night between 1 and 5 AM Eastern, when sales are slowest. If a product loses funding during the day, it reacts then instead of waiting.
One search on a real product from our testing. The blue line is the seller's price, and the orange line is what shoppers saw on Walmart. Walmart kept funding up to $17.62 and stopped at $17.63, so the price holds at $17.62, with Walmart covering $2.64 of every sale.
What keeps your prices safe
The first question most sellers ask: what stops this from doing something dumb to my prices?
Never below your minimum.
In any mode.
Above your maximum only if you allow it.
It's off by default. Even when it's on, the price never goes past 1.5x where it started.
Every search has a budget.
At most 30 steps and 20 minutes of total time without the discount. If it runs out, the optimizer settles on the best funded price it found.
Your Buy Box odds don't move.
While Walmart funds the discount, shoppers see the same price, so the Buy Box comparison doesn't change. The only exception is a refused test, which shows your full price for a minute or two.
Your strategy steps aside, then takes back over.
While Walmart funds a product, the optimizer prices it. When funding stops, your repricing strategy is back in charge.
Everything is logged.
Each test is a normal price update in your repricing history, labeled as a Walmart Funded Savings test, with the reason for each step.
You also choose how far it can go:
Raise the price only.
Never goes below the price you started with. This is the mode we'd start with.
Raise and lower the price.
Can also come down, never below your minimum, to trigger Walmart's discount or win it back after Walmart moves its target.
Where you'll see it
Funded products get a Walmart Funded Savings badge on the Products page. Click it to see:
what shoppers see
what you're paid
what Walmart adds per sale
the highest funded price found
every test, on a chart
The Walmart Funded Savings (active) filter lists every product Walmart is funding right now.
Want to confirm it on the payout side? Once an order ships, search its PO number under Payments in Walmart Seller Center. You'll see the sale price, the Walmart-funded savings, and your net payout. Even if you're not using the add-on yet, funded products still show what Walmart already pays you, and what a higher funded price would be worth on that product's sales.
What it's worth
Back to the example: +$0.90 a sale on a product selling 42 units a month is $37.80 a month, or $453.60 a year. That's one product, and your customers pay exactly the same.
The add-on is $49.00 a month per Walmart channel, so a single product like this one covers it.
How it fits your setup
It's an add-on, turned on per Walmart channel. It works with Custom, Private Label and CH.AI strategies on Walmart. If a strategy also covers Walmart channels without the add-on, the setting is simply ignored there.
Turn it on
Already on Flashpricer? It takes two steps:
Go to Settings → Billing, open Sales channel options, and add Walmart Funded Savings Optimization to your Walmart channel.
Open your Walmart strategy, turn on Optimize Walmart Funded Savings, pick a mode, and save.
The optimizer starts on your funded products within minutes. A search usually takes 30 to 60 minutes per product, since Walmart can take up to five minutes to apply each price.
Not on Flashpricer yet? Start a 14-day free trial. Setup takes about 15 minutes.
