My guess is that when you are in your Account record, you have the Contact sub-grid/view showing (you selected Contacts from the left navigation). The ribbon on top is sensitive to the context of what area is selected, When the Contacts area is selected, the ribbon options reflect items available to Contacts. If you want to send an email to the Account, try clicking on the General tab and then using Send Direct E-Mail - just know when you do this, it is going to send an email to the email address marked on the Account, not an individual Contact. Sounds like in your case you want to make a Contact email template, and then when adding fields, choose the record type of Account and you will have access to fields in the Account that is related to the Contact.
