What are common pitfalls when automating newsletters with PHP and a database system?

One common pitfall when automating newsletters with PHP and a database system is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries when interacting with the database to prevent malicious input from being executed.

// Example of using prepared statements to sanitize user input
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = :email");
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $email);
$stmt->execute();