"With BuddyPress your users get loads of emails for all the notifications they receive. Creating a good looking email template does wonders for the feel of your network, and really gives it a more unique feel."
This plugin is designed to fully import all of a Ning network's users, custom profile fields, and avatars to BuddyPress.
In short, everything that you can import from Ning to BuddyPress...
While members are being imported the plugin displays a user-friendly status page with a nifty list of user avatars, details, and current progress as the import page refreshes and
processes the import file in batches of 5 members.
All imported members receive a fully customizable introduction email with their login link, username and password.
And on the off-chance you have a very large Ning member list that's too big to upload via the plugin, you can also use FTP to upload the file and import all of your Ning network members.
"One of main reasons that BuddyPress communities fail is because members don't connect and interact with each other. One way to improve that is through design that keeps members interested."
The ability to invite members to the site by email
By default, BuddyPress only allows group admins to invite their friends to groups. In some communities, you might want members to be able to invite non-friends to groups as well.
"Automatically subscribe, unsubscribe, and update users to your MailChimp mailing list as users subscribe and unsubscribe to your site. Sync your BuddyPress profile fields with your MaiChimp merge variables and groups. Create MailChimp mail campaigns automatically from blog posts. AutoChimp uses a single options page to help you manage your preferred settings."