Our President
Betsy Vavrin, founder and president of SMC Marketing, is an experienced marketing executive with more than 30 years of marketing management experience. Her expertise is in developing customer-driven, strategic marketing programs, that deepen the customer’s relationship, increase profitability and improve customer loyalty.
Betsy’s background includes management positions at Fortune 500 companies—vice president, senior marketing manager at Great Western Bank and vice president of marketing for Coldwell Banker, Southwest. She brings both a depth and breadth of experience to address the marketing needs of major national corporations, as well as those of smaller regional and local companies.
Addressing each project from a strategic perspective, Betsy is particularly adept at designing national marketing programs for the unique needs of national, multi-unit and franchise organizations. She has successfully created and managed national marketing programs introducing cross-sell and customer-referral marketing across business units.
She has also developed system-wide local marketing programs, including those with a shared platform for developing and executing grand openings, open houses, local and co-op advertising, community involvement, strategic alliances, seminar programs, promotions and public relations.
To increase her clients’ profitability and lower their costs, Betsy has also developed client-specific customer retention programs. These programs include customer recognition and reward features, integrated communications programs as well as cross-sell and up-sell elements.
The retention programs created and directed by Betsy and her company,have been successful in reducing customer churn, developing new accounts, referring new customers and bringing in new assets. Whether the financial product is banking, real estate or insurance related, Betsy’s expertise in designing customer retention programs has had exceptional results.
Betsy has authored articles about these and other strategic marketing programs that have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, Los Angeles Business Journal and other professional publications.
Betsy completed her postgraduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, and is an honors graduate of California State University
at Fullerton.
In addition to her membership in numerous professional marketing associations, her involvement in the community has included board positions with the American Heart Association, the Junior League of Los Angeles, the Peninsula Committee of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, My Friend’s Place, Exceptional Children's Foundation and Center for Healthy Aging, among others. She is also a docent at The J. Paul Getty Museum, and has been appointed to the ExxonMobil Torrance Refinery Community Advisory Panel.
Betsy and her husband, Otto, who represents international film & Television composers, reside at Redondo Beach, California.