The preferred mailing may not be working because the preferences is set to startup ACT in the Contact List or Dashboard. When this occurs, ACT cannot load the Act4Advisors plugin fully because the buttons are part of the plugin and the Contact Detail interface.

Go to Tools, Preferences - click on the  Startup tab and select Contacts.




The other possibility is using a .pad file to open act when it should be the ACT! by Sage shortcut.




If this does not fix the Preferred Mailng issue, try this article:
http://kb.actforadvisors.com/questions.php?questionid=121

Act4Advisors
http://software4advisors.com 
Allied Financial Software, Inc.