How does email automation help improve customer engagement?

On the whole, yes, but it depends on the marketing pressure. :)

With PerceptInsight we have noticed very successful campaigns basis email automations. If you get to know a certain customer is opening your email but not clicking through you might want to have a different strategy versus lets say some customers clicking through but not completing the North Star metric that you might have for your organisation. Granular attributions and strategies built there of go a long way.

I believe that email automation can give users the message that you are trying to convey provided that you do it right, if you are using subject lines that do not make your recipient want to click on that email to open it then its no use, one needs to be very very creative to make a subject line that can actually have a higher operate. This is your entry point, I usually have seen a higher open rate when i use some kind of a joke in my subject line and answer it the first thing in my email body this establishes a decent relationship between you and the recipient from the start and it has the probablity that they would respond atleast not to your sales pitch but to at least your joke that it was funny