Hillary Clinton's campaign experienced a digital hiccup when it noticed that only about 100,000 of the 2.5 million email addresses in its database are still in use and working.

The Democratic presidential frontrunner was hoping to draw on a directory used during her first presidential run in 2008, but her operation's inbox was "clogged with bounce-back messages on the day Clinton announced her campaign and sent messages to supporters," the Los Angeles Times reported.

Jordan Cohen, the chief marketing officer for Fluent -- which specializes in email list acquisition -- told the newspaper that the huge attrition of data was not unique to the former secretary of state. But it still represents a big challenge for Clinton's newly assembled digital crew, the team's director, Teddy Goff, admitted.

"It wasn't like we all had time to retreat to a local bar and drown our sorrows," Goff quipped, but "it was an instantaneous recognition on the part of a lot of us that we had a bigger challenge ahead of us than we realized."

Meanwhile, the candidate's tech experts are modeling their online efforts after the White House's digital outreach, which they consider a model for how public figures can connect with voters, Time noted. Jenna Lowenstein, Goff's deputy, explained that the Internet was increasingly important to create a feeling of intimacy between the presidential hopeful and her supporters.

"You can have a candidate who everyone loves and wants to sit down and have a drink with them, 99 percent of people aren't going to be able to do that," Lowenstein said. "Digital is an opportunity to be a proxy of that."

Clinton still has some time to catch up on her online game, the Los Angeles Times commented. But given that President Barack Obama raised more than 40 percent of his total re-election campaign funding through "endless e-mail appeals," it is critical that she do so soon, the newspaper judged.

"Campaigns are looking at not just 'are they going to contribute $1, $10 when I send them an email,' but 'are they opening, are they clicking, are they forwarding this email to their friends. Are they taking the email and posting it onto social,'" Cohen explained. "There is just inherent value in having engagement that will lead, hopefully, into votes."