Ran into this pattern across enough stores that it's worth writing down.

Most brands treat their 12 core lifecycle flows as equally important. They're not. If you only ever get two live, make them these:

1. Abandoned Cart (not browse abandonment — cart specifically)

Someone put an item in their cart and left. That's the single highest-intent signal an unconverted visitor can give you, higher than an email signup, higher than a product view. A 3-email sequence (1hr, 24hr, 72hr) with the third one carrying a small incentive recovers a meaningful chunk of near-misses. This is the flow with the shortest path between 'built' and 'revenue' — you'll see it working within days.

2. Post-Purchase (specifically the education/usage sequence, not just the receipt)

Everyone nails the transactional email. Almost nobody builds what comes after: how to use the product, what to pair it with, when to expect the next need. This is the flow that quietly sets up your replenishment and winback sequences to actually work later — skip it and those two flows will underperform no matter how good the copy is.

Everything else — browse abandonment, review requests, winback — compounds on top of these two. But if you're starting from zero and only have a weekend, cart + post-purchase is the highest leverage use of your time.

Curious if others have seen the same pattern or if a different flow carried more weight for your store.