New Feature Lets Consumers Shop for Groceries From Yahoo Mail

Verizon Media today announced the launch of Groceries from Walmart, a Yahoo Mail feature that enables users to browse, add to cart, and purchase essential groceries from Walmart within Yahoo Mail. According to Verizon Media, this is the first time that email users can fill a shopping cart from their inbox, streamlining their shopping experience from within the mail app. Today, one in four people in the U.S. use Yahoo Mail, which delivers 4.5 billion emails daily. 

“Customers are leaning on Walmart more than ever for us to help them save on items they need the most, but also to help save them time,” said Rich Lehrfeld, senior vice president, Walmart Marketing, in a statement. “The new ‘Groceries from Walmart’ feature that lives within Yahoo Mail takes one more step out of our customers’ days, helping them shop when, how and where they want.” 

Here's how Groceries from Walmart works: Once users sign into their email accounts, they'll notice a dedicated Walmart banner at the top, above their incoming messages. They click that banner and then type in and search for any essential supermarket items they may need and then check out from there. Groceries from Walmart is currently available on the Yahoo Mail iOS app and desktop, with Android coming later this year. 

Users of the feature also receive personalized grocery recommendations based on their Yahoo profiles. Additionally, the shopping cart never expires, meaning consumers can keep adding items throughout the week and check out whenever they’re ready. 

Total Retail's Take: This new functionality certainly makes sense given the fact that more Americans are shopping online for groceries than ever before, and doing it more often since the onset of COVID-19. In fact, according to a May survey by Inmar Intelligence, almost 80 percent of Americans are now shopping online for groceries — up 40 percent from pre-pandemic levels. What’s more, almost 60 percent say that they're shopping for groceries online more often now than they were before the pandemic began. It's also interesting to note that this is also not the first time Verizon has implemented a service to help consumers with grocery shopping. Last year, for example, Yahoo Mail announced that its updated app included Grocery View, which shows users deals at local grocery stores, and then lets them save those deals to their shopping lists, as well as connect their store loyalty card to automatically apply saved coupons at checkout. While the feature seemed odd at the time — it really has nothing to do with email — Verizon claimed that it builds on consumers desire to save money when they're dealing with mass mailing lists and spam. Now, Yahoo will give users the ability to shop Walmart’s grocery catalog at their leisure and add items to a shopping cart within Yahoo Mail for pickup from their local Walmart store.